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School magic in the magical school: the school that teaches through stories of Harry Potter

In this text we study positions advanced by educators and school observers, and examine how school is shaped in stories J. K. Rowling wrote about Harry Potter. Analyses were inspired by the Cultural Studies in their work with Education, considering that these stories act as cultural pedagogies. We highlight a host of powerful effects in the cinema, the Web, in the marketing of many products, in the Academy, and we focus on the role stories play in the discursive configuration of school and subjects narrated in such stories. We show that their powerful effects go beyond entertainment for not only young readers/consumers of the different texts and artefacts created, but also due to their market success! The school plays an important role in the representations conveyed in these stories, whose main theme is the battle between good and evil. These stories do not raise questions about school; its significance, excellence and power are constantly (re)assured to systematically graduate young magicians and to encourage the appropriation and development of the knowledge and the tradition of witchcraft.

School; Cultural Pedagogies; Harry Potter


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