The simple answer is because of the plot. Rowling's world just isn't internally consistent.

Or how do you explain that a housewife who's good enough in magic to utterly destroy Lestrange isn't skilled enough to make clothes for his children, when even in a real world pre-chinese-made-cheap-clothing setting it wasn't at all atypical for people to make their own clothes? And that was without magic.

Unless your story is about Harry starting his own clothing business, you're not supposed to take notice on the fact that the economy in the wizarding world doesn't make any sense. It's there, and unless you specifically point your finger at it the readers will accept it as it is.

On the actual topic, has anyone considered the possibility that Hogwarts might not be the only school of magic (or that a lot of wizards are home schooled), and that the 7th year Hogwarts students might truly be better than your average adult wizard simply because your average adult hasn't as good education?

 

Okay, so I'll agree that I was overcomplicating it a bit. A major reason for it was Percy Weasley. Rowling does seem to detail how he's the best in his year, or one of I think and he gets the Head Boy position, (perhaps some more talented people didn't apply - though from prefect selection do they need to apply?). So, I couldn't see that he couldn't transfigure something like furniture. Only a theory and again, it's likely severly limited. But I'll still go with your answer, because at the end of the day, it does make sense to accept the simpler explanation, and so conclude that Percy's year was particularly poor or something.

Point accepted.

The Daily Prophet point I concede on, we did have a bias and limited narrator. The second part, what I meant when I said that, was that experimentation didn't seem to be a focused thing in society. In our societies we know people are doing experiments all the time (even if some of them are so closely guarded that we don't know they exist), and if we want to find something out we actively seek it. On the other hand the Department of Mysteries where they do such experiments (we assume), involves the members never talking about their work and the other wizards never seem to even guess at what they might or might not be doing. So, my point was still wrong but not quite as wrong as it came across, my fault, sorry.

 

You can't admit that we have a bias and limited narrator and then speculate in the same way you did last time. It's incongruent and I don't agree with your point. First, you can't compare one society with a whole world. One has like 3.5 thousands of citizens, the other 7.05 billion. Its statistically and anthropologically wrong. You just don't do it.

I, on the other hand, think that experimentation is a focused thing in Wizarding Britain because they have the Department of Mysteries. It was literally explained and I believe it. Why? Because Harry is an awful observer, he doesn't give a shit about experimentation and the writer was kind enough to point that wizards do in fact experiment with magic, but it isn't a fundamental factor to the story. So any conjecture about it is doomed to fail because the reader only has one little explanation, it doesn't give enough place to maneuver any hypothesis.

 

I admit the extension of thought was always going to be hugely fallible and I never meant it as an ironclad fact. As I stated, I was wrong. The Department of Mysteries is a centre of experimentation, and people know it exists. All I was stating was that the people involved couldn't speak about it, and that whereas in Britain science is literally taught in schools, whereas in Wizarding Britain it isn't. These 2 points were only mentioned to explain why I came to my incorrect conclusion. It was a poor point and I have accepted that - I was only trying to explain why I even thought it was a point in the first place.

Does that explain it?