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None of the above. In one sense, this is quite progressive - you learn English and Maths from the everyday activity of writing essays, buying butterbeer and so on. In another sense, it's pretty disastrous, and explains presumably why agriculture, finance, fine art and essentially everything else is left either to normal humans or to goblins. Upon graduation, almost all the children end up working as bureaucrats for the Ministry of Magic, a totalitarian one-party state apparatus, and spending the money they earn there in shops, shopkeeping being the other main occupation of wizards. Everyone else appears to become a publican, a teacher at Hogwarts (and thus effectively an employee of the Ministry - see also the Weasley off with the dragons, the health service and the editorial staff at the newspaper), a professional quidditch player or a pop star. No, really - there are about two dozen British Quidditch teams, each made up of, let's say, a squad of twelve. The total wizard population of the UK is, accounting for longevity, probably somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000. So, your chance of being an elite athlete is, conservatively, about 2%. Your chances of being a member of the Wyrd Sisters is a little smaller than your chances of being a Weasley. The shopkeepers either retail goods (in which case there must be a producer, wizard or otherwise, somewhere down the line), or make them themselves, like Ollivander or the Weasleys.
Unless you get a job either in the Ministry, serving it pies or playing quidditch, you're stuffed by a complete absence of other skills. The people sleeping rough under Victoria embankment and living on sandwiches who think they are magicians? They are. Not for nothing is the hospital for magical maladies called St. Mungo's - it gives the down-and-out wizard a familiar name to seek out.
(Incidentally, there's a Rowling statement to the effect that there is a three-year Auror course - effectively an apprenticeship or tertiary education - Tonks was taught by Moody during hers. However, it does still mean that you decide at 18 whether somebody should be trained to be an elite magical warrior/policeman based on their A-levels.) |
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