The house system seems to be a failure in its original purpose.
Take Slytherin. The house was originally supposed to be for the ones with ambition and cunning, except anyone who is cunning enough tries their hardest not to get into Slytherin. It's like trying to be sneaky with the phrase "I'M SNEAKY!" written on your back in giant flashing letters.
The cunning, antisocial Slytherins get sorted into Ravenclaw. There, they can amass their knowledge and power and eventually build their unplottable marble tower and run questionable experiments in it.
The cunning, ambitious Slytherins go into Gryffindor. Going into politics would be easier if the sheeple would say, 'I know that one. They were in Gryffindor, and are all right, honorable, and upfront. They have my vote.", and you are still snakey enough to deal with the former Slytherins.
The cunning Slytherin who wants to rule from the shadows goes into Hufflepuff. Most adult Slytherings would give their left nut and half their magic for the thing every Hufflepuff gets: an instant support structure composed of people who won't betray you. No self-interested minions, no toadies just waiting until you have your back turned; but honest to goodness friends who are willing to help you out simply because you're also a Hufflepuff. And no one is threatened by you, so they'll accept you as their adviser that much easier. And in the odd case where power and the spotlight is thrust upon you, where you become a Claudius rather than a Caesar; well...
All that Slytherin house is left with are idiots who are too ambitious with no visible sense of cunning (yet). I.e. Malfoy

 

There's almost no differences between the houses, other than their history. It doesn't matter what great deeds you do while in your house, it matters what great deeds the generation before you did. Otherwise they're pretty much just a set of arbitrary values that sever to give some tension and drama, and perhaps some sense of purpose where none else could be found.

 

There comes a point in time where you have to realize that the majority of the Hogwarts students are just dumb kids. Voldemort was a one-off. Sure there are darker elements incubating within the safety of the school's walls - you can't tell me that everyone you went to school with turned out to be class acts.

Yet for the most part, all these students are doing is looking for friends, acceptance and validation.

So you're asking if the house system works? Yes, yes it does. It drives the competitive ones out in front, keeps a relative order to the school by giving rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior, as well as giving a student - who would otherwise be away from their family for eight months - a sense of belonging.

Anything else is fanon and authorial fiat.

 

I always figured that kids in various Houses never were all that different. The Hat may detect a certain attitude and sort them accordingly, but kids aren't all that different in such fundamental ways.
The House system was meant for some competition, imo, to push for academic success. I my mind, people don't get immediately categorized by the House they are/used to be in.

 

We had a huge-ass debate about this in the Alexandra Potter thread. I think many people miss the core idea of the House system, and it's that confusion over the intention of the House system that leads to people thinking it fails to live up to that misled idea of its purpose.

Back to basics here: what is the Sorting Hat doing? How does it function?

We're told in PS: the Hat emulates as best it can the decisions the Founders would have made about who they wanted in their House. A lot of people forget that, thinking just about the two traits stated as each House's favoured qualities. But that's overly simplistic. The Sorting is not a personality test.

The Founders were people. They would have had prejudices, emotions. They would have considered the students' future as well as their present. They would have given thought to the students' happiness and what would be best for them. Most of all, they would have decided each Sorting on a case by case basis, not by following some predictable algorithm.

As such, we have people sorted into Houses that they're desperate to be in. We have people sorted into Houses according to family loyalty and the desire to be with siblings. We have people sorted into Houses whose traits they lack completely, either in the present (E.g. Neville and Hermione learnt bravery from being exposed to brave people), or forever (Crabbe and Goyle never learnt to exhibit any Slytherin traits). We have the Hat considering sorting people into Houses not because they possess those traits, but because that House will be the best for their personal development (Harry to Slytherin). We have no Muggleborns sorted into Slytherin until post-DH.

With all that in mind: yes, I think the Sorting works exactly as intended. Just not as you think of it.

 

An 11 year old may have some innate level of cunning, but not developed enough to deliberately plan to not be in Slytherin.

Also you're mistaking, in my opinion, the Hat's level of deliberation. If it sees someone wanting to be in Ravenclaw because they want to amass knowledge for the sake of gaining future power, its going to select Slytherin, just like it would if you wanted to be in Hufflepuff so you can gain lots of loyal allies to further your rise to power.

Beyond that, what was the original purpose. From my point of view, its the same purpose that any school house system has. Its there to give people a sense of belonging, as mentioned in book 1 - a family. Its there to give a quick and easy method of punishment and reward, to drive competition and promote self-policing. Also to help with organisation and administration of the student body.

Real schools do it pretty much at random (although not always). Of course a magic school has some funky and weird way to do it.

 

I think most eleven year olds aren't planning their future political careers when the hat is placed on their head; they're worrying about whether they'll have any friends, what their parents will think of their house, if they'll fit in. They're just kids.

 

Plus there's so much overlap in the traits given that there has to be some other method beyond personality. You have to be brave to be loyal, intelligent to be cunning, brave to be ambitious, so on so forth. I mean, what happens if you try to sort a brilliant kid who also really wants to be in government and have power, but not at the sake of backstabbing people he cares about?

As a side note: Viewtiful, your profile pic disturbs me on many levels.

 

Well, obviously that means that you exhibit the traits of all 4 founders, and, therefore, must have the house of Merlin created for you.

 

What does the house system even try to accomplish?
I'm not so sure.

It was stated that the Sorting Hat emulates the founders decision in his sorting. That indicates that the founders each had a group of apprentices or that they tutored a group of students. So Godric took the couragous, Rowena the smart, Salazar the driven and Helga the rest. Which says great thing about Helga Hufflepuff, less so about her house.

But there's little point keeping a system of semi apprenticeship up after the masters died. So maybe the sorting's a personality test?
Courage/Wit/Loyalty/Cunning are not mutually exclusive. And what would be the point of housing those with similar views together? That might be fine with Hufflepuffs, who are hardworking and kind, but the reckless Gryffindors and the restless Rawenclaws would just work themselves in a frenzy!
Not to mention the pit of snakes. They don't even like each other!

Let's examine what the sorting does. It detemines your roommates. Would you rather be surrounded by the brave but reckless, the witty who value knowledge above all else, the ambitious and cunning or the loyal and diligent ?
I'd want to be in Hufflepuff. It's not like the Hat would make me any less smart. It just decides who I live with.

In conclusion - let's not think to deeply on that.

 

I think it depends on how the Founders taught. Did they take groups as sort of apprentices and teach them for the most part, perhaps combining for some lessons? Did they employ other teachers to help teach in the school and oversee their groups? Or split the teaching evenly?

Yes, I think the hat selects students that the Founders would likely have wanted to teach, but I don't think it prepares them for success.

IMO, the house system is detrimental to the students' learning and development. It does encourage competition, but beyond that it serves little purpose. It is the worst sort of "labeling", pigeonholing students into preconceived stereotypical roles and creating artificial divisions between them. Rather than serving as a fraternity or sorority for post-graduation, it only creates prejudice and rivalries.

 

That sort of thing happens even in real life school house systems. At my school Grougar never won the sports events, Alton were a bunch of geeks and Burnon were awesome at sports but crap at everything else.

Or at least those were the stereotypes. They had no basis in fact, other than Grougar hadn't won anything at sports day for a few years (random chance), Alton had won the chess tournament (and when I say Alton I mean 1 person who's house happened to be Alton), and Burnon had been quite successful at sports day the previous few years.

No basis in fact, but enough of a history to create a stereotype. And with stereotypes come prejudices.

 

In the words of one of my more memorable English teachers, sometimes a river is just a river or, in this context, sometimes a plot device to increase tension between characters is just a plot device to increase tension between characters.

In PS the House system served as a way of identifying good characters (Gryffindors) and bad characters (Slytherins). Obviously it grew a bit in PoA when Pettigrew was revealed as a traitor but then it kind of faded away. It was also an easy way for JK to create school teams.

 

Personally I just figured the Founders didn't really create a school per si just a place where they could teach whoever they wanted to and have both the mutual protection coming from being with others but also someone else to cover subjects for a more rounded education. The whole traits thing is just an attempt to make it sound greater than it really is.

And then comes the bizarre wizarding decision in thinking that since 4 different groups of apprentices worked for them then it must be a basis for an actual school...

Makes a lot more sense than Houses being deliberately created.

 

Er, the House system is a mainstay of British public schools, upon which Hogwarts is modeled. My own school had four houses, an annual inter-house cup, inter-house sports competitions. Each House had its own prefects and a teacher who was the head of that house. Each House had its own common room. The Houses even had the associated colours of red, green, blue and yellow.

(I was in Burwell, and we won the House Cup all 7 years I was there. Mostly because we rocked at sports. We also happened to be the green house, so I guess that makes us Slytherin.)

Three big differences though:

1. We got sorted into Houses in our second year, not our first.
2. Boarders weren't divided by House.
3. Classes weren't divided by House.

 

I am aware of it existing to some extent or another around the world though some places(and my personal experience) tend to have it for specific events and changed each year. I think I understand how you guys got that idea though.

I meant it in terms of them creating the houses with their own name, having the exact traits apparently being the only ones they care about, creating something that can do their job when they pass on, etc.

From my point of view things don't really fit each other, it seems like the Founders had full-time apprentices while helping each other a bit on certain subjects, created the Sorting Hat because the whole idea was a master-apprentice relationship somewhat expanded/ensured to last and then people after formalized things in this way.

Sure they deliberately creating a school could work but then you have to handwave a lot with 'wizard logic' and still get something that doesn't really make much sense. If they weren't actually going for a school in the way we use the term then the problems(or at least part) are a lot more understandable. Though I suppose if you have them with no notion of long term planning whatsoever both ideas are one and the same.

 

<Raises his hand>

Until Taure's illuminating post, I had never been aware of that. I had also thought the House system a creative element of JKR's world.

If not for living in Hong Kong I wouldn't have any concept of the British examination system and wouldn't have realized those parallels either.

I should probably check and see if some of the private schools around here also have a "house" system. I know the government and aided schools generally don't.

 

Lots of countries have the house system tradition, even ones that never had an English presence at some point in time. Here in Argentina we have private schools that work exactly like in England, including GCSEs (which are IGCSEs for International), A levels (or AS), houses, points, inter-house sports competitions, etc.

Also, I just realized I was Hufflepuff. Goddamn yellow.

 

Hufflepuff too. And we never won anything