People: play is not primarily for the benefit of adults who wish not to be harried by children. It's for the benefit of children, who need practice learning how to cope with victory, loss, bruising, thumping and arguing as civilized human beings. Take away the controlled danger, and you take away the kid's ability to become a mature adult.
Which, by the way (seems like all roads lead to this Rome for me at present), is one of the truly salutary aspects of the education at Hogwarts. I agree wholeheartedly with this observation from a larger piece on HP & The Deathly Hallows. First, a catalog of injuries sustained by students:
Leaving aside the dangers generated directly by the Dark Lord and his minions, Harry breaks an arm and (later) fractures his skull playing Quidditch, Ron has his leg snapped by the bite of a giant hound, Neville breaks his wrist falling off his broom, Hermione gets accidentally transformed into a kind of cat person, countless students find themselves burned or otherwise disfigured by potions gone awry or jinxes well-delivered, and so on. Some of Rowling's most creepily delightful inventions concern the patients at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries; and the experience of Luna Lovegood, whose mother died when a spell she was casting backfired, is not unusual. Many of these problems are fixed with relative ease, but even so, the wizarding world is one in which disease, injury, and death seem to be around every corner.And their significance:
our culture is so deeply risk-averse, so determined to punish anyone who might cause injury to us or our children, or even might fail to take precautions to prevent us from being injured, that we can scarcely imagine an environment in which risk is so blithely accepted and injuries dealt with so matter-of-factly. But it is just because Hogwarts is a place which allows young people to take such risks—and therefore to test themselves and grow in capability and confidence—that its students and graduates love it so much.I realize we're talking about an imaginary school, but isn't it the case we love the institutions that bettered us? Who loves school these days? No one. Possibly because you can't play tag there anymore.
