A lot of people point out that it doesn’t make any sense that Harry and Ron didn’t like their schoolwork. Well I figured out why:
It’s because the magic system is just as boring in-universe as out of universe. It doesn’t make any sense in universe either. Harry and Ron realised Rowling’s magic system kinda stinks way before we did, because they spent all day learning it.
If Sanderson had been writing Harry Potter, then Harry and Ron would have liked learning magic as much as Hermione did (Also, Sanderson actually DID write a book about a super-school, it’s called Skyward, it’s good)
This is the one thing I really appreciated about the Discworld books on a recent re-read. The wizards are hilariously incapable of doing anything useful. Terry Pratchett doesn’t give a super clear series of rules for the magic system but it’s abundantly clear that the wizards are incapable of actually useful magic, and mostly just get too tired up in internal power struggles to ever do anything. And in the book Sourcery, the first sourcerer (one who can create new spells) to grace the disc takes over the world, realizes running the entire world is too stressful and tedious then creates his own pocket dimension to play with magic in instead (I’m oversimplifiing here, skipping over a bunch of interpersonal stuff related to a sentient wizard’s staff run by a dead guy who tricked Death among other details but that’s the general gist)
By making the wizards so useless it bypasses any of the logical problems posed by creating a world with magic in it. There’s no “why no use this spell” “why not magic out of this problem” etc. all because the wizards are too useless to actually do anything
I don’t know about that. They literally introduced time travel and then never bring it up again except for one sentence where “oh they all broke”.
Like don’t get me wrong it’s not horrible but it’s also not great. It is good enough for a kids story which is what it is, not something to build your life off of
The wizards series of the discworld books are by far my favourite, but for exactly the reason you’ve set out. (Similarly with the witches)
The dialogue between the faculty is so believable and so stupifyingly inane and political that it’s hard to say that anything is more probable.
Anyone actually interested in how magic works gets ignored and all that really matters is where the next good meal is coming from.
Just one of the countless reasons that Terry pratchett is a gem of an author.
Rincewind isn’t useless at most things, he’s only useless at magic.
Esk is actually able to use magic to solve problems, because she’s a precocious child and also female.
One of the big ideas about magic in his universe isn’t just that the wizards are useless but that using magic is more trouble then it’s worth. It creates all sorts of left over magic residue that can build up to a myriad of effects.
We see the wizards preform powerful spells, showing that they can do have power and do have a certain degree of knowledge, but rather choose not to.
The duty of the wizards is more to make sure no one preforming magic willy nilly and to prevent people from making sorcerers.