Right, I suppose it's more that while some Slytherins might possess those virtues in some capacity (certainly not Crabbe and Goyle, but some), their abundance of cunning/ambition makes them ignore them in favor of being backstabbing pricks.

 

So I guess Dumbledore was cunning too and for a good reason. Does it make him a bad person?

 

No, I meant that he was deceitful, especially with how he always concealed important information.

 

At the extreme risk of derailing the thread once again, I actually went to a boarding school. Believe me when I say Sorting is useless and irrelevant.

Back on topic, Slytherin turns out asshole students because Slytherin is made of asshole students. It's a neverending cycle. Some nitwit decides they can judge a child's personality at eleven, they throw said kid in an environment of assholes, and then act all smug when their self-fulfilling prophecy is fulfilled.

"Here are a group of children with a high risk for conduct disorders! Let's put them all in one place and encourage the worst parts of their young, barely-formed psyches for the next seven years!" said no pedagogue ever.

 

Grouping all the potential assholes together aside - because chaosattractor is right, that's just a recipe for disaster - how do you think actual adults would act if we split them into the soldiers, the scholars, the workers, and the politicians? No, don't answer that, we already know: the soldiers get admiration, the scholars get praise, the workers get apathy, and the politicians get disgust. Deserved or not, if all these four groups had to wear clearly defined uniforms and slept in separated areas, I doubt it would take long before the the fourth group became outcasts.

Unity is important for a functioning society, but we barely manage it as grown-ass adults, and these are still-developing children here. Is anybody actually surprised that they don't react well when forced into these kinds of groups?

 

I don't think there's ever been a society that actually liked their politicians

And to be clear I see politicians as a separate class from monarchs and such. The men behind the men, so to speak.

Edit: I'd be okay with Sorting if people could change houses. I personally had my boarding arrangements shuffled around quite a few times because my school was trying to raise healthy and well-adjusted kids, not uphold dusty traditions. It's a particularly touchy subject for me; I'd be in prison or dead if I'd been left to stew in a toxic, enabling environment for nine months each year.

 

I'd argue that letting students change houses would promote a quitting attitude as well as potentially being an organisational nightmare.

You want to let overly dramatic teenagers up and quit house at the first sign of the feels?

 

Quitting attitude from what?

How many people in this thread actually attended a boarding secondary school? Boarding arrangements change all the damn time, and if muggles can manage it I sure as hell would think that wizards can deal with the logistics.

So do garbagemen, auditors and those people who salt the streets when it's winter, I keep forgetting what they're called. You're not going to find many people who think of the above with anything other than apathy to mild disgust. You'll find even fewer who think of them with appreciation without prompting.

You're conflating what is with what ought to be.

How does this relate to the situation at hand? How a group sees itself is irrelevant in the face of how the status quo views it, and pardon me but it's quite obvious that the original commenter was referring to how the majority of society will end up viewing those socialized along the lines of each House.

Also I don't know what your bravery-idiocy and personal values have to do with anything either. Perhaps you should take a mental step back before launching into self-defense.

Oh please, the whole "aloof Slytherin" fanon trope is way too tired for this discussion.

What was that you were saying about stereotyping?

 

Slughorn and Andromeda are examples of decent Slytherins. But I suppose Salazar's racial bias towards muggleborns doesn't help their cause... And yes they're a bunch of assholes.

 

We mustn't forget that they're sorted by having a certain personlity. That doesn't mean that's the only character trait, nor that they'll always be defined by said trait.

We have Pettigrew in Gryffindor. His deeds don't speak of bravery, exactly, but then again, he was faced with some pretty shitty choices. Presumably, he just braver than he was cunning, loyal or clever. The same could be applied to just about anybody.

As for the sorting process... Can't claim I'm wholly onboard with it, but it's a bloody book. It's part of the charm of the world, even if it isn't something I'd wish to do at a school in the real world.

But yeah. there's a pretty obvious logical flaw in putting all the students with a ton of prejudice in a huge circlejerk enviroment that only reinforces that prejudice.

 

Personally, I think the choice factor is getting severely overlooked in the Sorting debate. Honestly, I think it does a lot to explain just why the Slytherins built up such a toxic element.

Now, one thing that's brought up quite a few times in canon is that house affiliation seems to be a pretty big deal in the British wizarding community. It's not just a silly little Hogwarts tradition, lots of pureblood families take massive pride in what House their family's kids always end up in. Just look at how Sirius Black wound up disowned in no small part for being a Gryffindor when the Blacks were always Slytherins.

Basically, when it comes to Purebloods I suspect that 99% of the time kids pick the "right" house for their family, even if it doesn't really suit them at all. Crabbe and Goyle might not have been cunning or ambitious, but since their familys were always Slytherins, they chose Slytherin house anyway.

Now just look at how Voldemort started his rise to power: by being the top dog of Slytherin while he was at school. Which actually matters a lot more than just being the head of a normal school clique, since family and house connections are such a big deal.

So, by the end of the war Voldemort had pretty much turned most of a generation of Slytherins into his willing lackeys through intimidation and sheer force of personality. Most of the Death Eaters who managed to stay out of Azkaban passed two things on to their children: death eater ideology, and traditional family pressure to join Slytherin House.

In other words, I think it's not so much that Slytherin has always been evil as it is that the house is currently full of jerks on account of Voldemort's continuing influence within the house. Thanks to him, Slytherin's pretty much gone from being the house for "Cunning and ambition" to "The House for Death Eater families."

Which is why many Slytherins joining the Battle of Hogwarts and families like the Malfoys turning on Voldemort is a turning point. The next generation of Slytherins isn't going to be indoctrinated in Death Eater ideals, so presumably the house would be going back to its roots.

 

The Sorting stays guys, whether you think it's good or not. Rowling had the chance to get rid of it, she didn't. I honestly didn't think the sorting in the series was bad, I mean Slytherin was literally the only problem. All the other Houses were perfectly fine.

That being said, I still don't know why Rowling kept the Slytherin House in the end. It's not like she ever bothered to redeem them, so why keep it? It was literally the only thing that caused problems in the series. Who were the bullies? The Slytherins. Who were the racists? The Slytherins. Who were the genocidal maniacs? The Slytherins.

If she didn't go for Unity, why keep the House? In the books it was pure cancer. I'm not one of the people who think being ambitious and cunning necessarily makes you bad, but Rowling went with it.

Now that I think about it, she must have kept Slytherin so that they will keep shoving all the bad guys there and not have them pollute the minds of the good guys from the other houses. Even their common room is in the dungeons, I wonder if that was intentional.

 

Because the house itself is a massive part of wizarding society as is stated above.

The housing system has been the way it has for thousands of years and I doubt it ever even occurred to Rowling to make a grand gesture by writing it out.

Getting rid of Slytherin as a house reeks of bad fanon.

 

But still , Slytherin in the series represents everything that's bad in the world. Why not do something about it?