School is all about taming children and teaching them to deny their immediate wants for broader social reasons. 'Do What Thou Wilt' was the only bloody rule they didn't have.
'"Do What Thou Wilt" shall be the only law,' said occultist Aleister Crowley, but as I remember it, my headmistress said precisely the opposite. The problem is that magic, 'real' magic of the occultist kind, the kind that must surely be taught by anybody claiming to offer 'a history of magic', is at direct odds with the principle of schooling. Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in the concept of a witchcraft academy, one that JK Rowling neatly masks with pumpkin juice and quidditch. (I was going to say something about turning a toad into a hamburger, but I know how long these McLibel cases take). If all goes well, headmaster and grand wizard Dakaneth (real name Andreas Starchel) presents them with a 'Veneficus Certificate', which will be of tremendous use when applying for a job at McDonald's, mainly because when they get bored they can turn a customer into a toad. Pupils at the Hexenschule learn astrology, potion-making and the history of magic. Ha!īut it isn't just Britain, we now discover. There is no hiding from qualifications, kids! If you bunk off maths and skulk behind the bike sheds listening to your iPod, we will hunt you down and give you a degree in 'iPod Studies' or 'Bike Shed Culture'. If they refuse to engage, then we simply enlarge the syllabus further until it engulfs whatever they happen to be interested in. British educational theory has been, for some time, that one must chase after teenagers and throw qualifications at them, creating 'academic disciplines' out of tourism, media and sport. The very existence of the Hexenschule, nestled in the mountains of Klagenfurt, is reassuring proof that Tony Blair is not the only person committed to university places for all.
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