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In continuation and in response to the excellent analysis of the position of Slytherin House in the Potterverse by the_bitter_word I wish to make the point that regardless of ideological differences or how Sorting is done, its mere existence already dooms the school to internal warfare. This is best illustrated by Muzafer's Sherif work Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment also summarized here. Briefly, this was an experiment in which 2 groups of 11-12 year old boys were brought to a camp site in which they first spent 5 or 6 days without knowing of the other group's presence. During this stage each group started developing a sense of group identity and internal hierarchy. Upon learning of the existence of the other group the boys asked to compete against the other group, team identity became stronger and team effort more efficient. During the second stage formal competitions between the teams were arranged as well as other friction-inducing situations (such as sharing the dining room at the same time). The two teams became aggressive and abusive towards each other to the point of food-throwing, raids on the dorm of the rival team and property damage. After a few days of that the researchers attempted to bring reconciliation between the teams. Merely sharing non-competitve fun activities did not help. It took the faking of sabotaging the water supply by outsiders (which required the joint effort of all boys to fix) and moving both teams to a new location (with more problems requiring large group effort on the way) to overcome rivalry that was instilled in just a few days.
Moreover, the boys who participated in the Robbers Cave Experiment were specifically selected to be as similar to one another as possible. All were well-adjusted, of the same age and educational level, normal physical development, no health or other impairments, all from middleclass Protestant families that were established in the area, all were living with both parents. Also, neither of the boys knew any of the others prior to the experiment.
The situation of children attending Hogwarts has to be worse in the term of House rivalry because the Sorting by the Sorting Hat is supposed to be based on differences in personality and values that the Hat detects in the children's minds. In the Robbers Cave Experiment small differences between the two teams became deliberately amplified as one team sought to assert its identity and difference from the other. Thus one team adopted a more 'masculine' identity while the other got into the habit of huddling in prayer before games. At Hogwarts the Sorting itself already capitalizes on existing differences. Once the students enter the culture of their House I expect they become even less balanced in personality, exaggerating the traits preferred by their House and attenuating those preferred by other Houses. We see as Gryffindors become bolder and more showy they also become less studious, less intellectually-inclined, less industrious. I imagine similar processes take place in the other Houses.
Most Hogwarts student had at least one parent who had attended the school in the past. Many have multiple Hogwarts alumni in their families. As a result most students arrive with preconceived notions about the Houses and House rivalries take the form of expanded clan wars.
The House identity does not stop once students graduate because alliances formed at school are carried over into adult life. Most adult wizards and witches either work in small business and have few colleagues or work at the Ministry, where various departments have a preferential attraction to members of one House. It isn't hard to imagine that the Aurors are predominantly Gryffindors, the Unspeakables predominantly Ravenclaws, the body of desk riders a mix of Hufflepuff and Slytherin with the latter seeking the pathways leading to those places they see as power tipping points (not necessarily the obvious powerful positions). Few adult wizards and witches interact with a balanced mix of alumni of all 4 Houses and very few are in position where they are required to cooperate on a daily basis with such - leading to the persistence of prejudices acquired in middle childhood throughout life.
Moreover, the boys who participated in the Robbers Cave Experiment were specifically selected to be as similar to one another as possible. All were well-adjusted, of the same age and educational level, normal physical development, no health or other impairments, all from middleclass Protestant families that were established in the area, all were living with both parents. Also, neither of the boys knew any of the others prior to the experiment.
The situation of children attending Hogwarts has to be worse in the term of House rivalry because the Sorting by the Sorting Hat is supposed to be based on differences in personality and values that the Hat detects in the children's minds. In the Robbers Cave Experiment small differences between the two teams became deliberately amplified as one team sought to assert its identity and difference from the other. Thus one team adopted a more 'masculine' identity while the other got into the habit of huddling in prayer before games. At Hogwarts the Sorting itself already capitalizes on existing differences. Once the students enter the culture of their House I expect they become even less balanced in personality, exaggerating the traits preferred by their House and attenuating those preferred by other Houses. We see as Gryffindors become bolder and more showy they also become less studious, less intellectually-inclined, less industrious. I imagine similar processes take place in the other Houses.
Most Hogwarts student had at least one parent who had attended the school in the past. Many have multiple Hogwarts alumni in their families. As a result most students arrive with preconceived notions about the Houses and House rivalries take the form of expanded clan wars.
The House identity does not stop once students graduate because alliances formed at school are carried over into adult life. Most adult wizards and witches either work in small business and have few colleagues or work at the Ministry, where various departments have a preferential attraction to members of one House. It isn't hard to imagine that the Aurors are predominantly Gryffindors, the Unspeakables predominantly Ravenclaws, the body of desk riders a mix of Hufflepuff and Slytherin with the latter seeking the pathways leading to those places they see as power tipping points (not necessarily the obvious powerful positions). Few adult wizards and witches interact with a balanced mix of alumni of all 4 Houses and very few are in position where they are required to cooperate on a daily basis with such - leading to the persistence of prejudices acquired in middle childhood throughout life.
However, I agree that at Hogwarts, the 'Sorting' is extremely divisive.
At my school, the four houses competed for the house cup each year - points were awarded for everything from best essay, poetry, recitation, cake making and art to sport and singing competitions. In fact, it was probably the most creative time in the school year. But - and it's a big but - there were also school teams that competed with other schools. And it's this that's missing from the potterverse - other than for the triwizard tournament, there isn't a single instance which brings the children together AS A SCHOOL. So, with all competition being internal, there is no unifying factor, and Hogwarts becomes four schools within one - which, it may be argued is what the founders originally intended :)
Oh, and by the way. No one graduates from Hogwarts. It's not a university. They simply leave school.
And although my daughter's school apparently has houses that the school is split into, nobody pays much attention to them! But that is just the private schools; when I was going to high school, we didn't have various "houses" within it, it was just the school.
So I had some cultural adjustment to do when I was reading the HP series: *everything* seemed alien!
Alison
Alison
the houses in ordinary schools are a watered down version of the system in boarding schools - where your house becomes like a surrogate family.
You can leave school as soon as you hit the school leaving age - with or without qualifications. That's the only distinction. There's no attendence certificate or anything. You get your A level results in August and the certificate is issued by the examination board - not the school.
In my day, we were eager to leave right after the last exam - as we were entitled to go down the dole office and sign on.
I'm not sure what if any other obligations you mean.
I don't think competing against outsiders is necessary for school spirit. Joint activities can be collaborative. Get the students to create something together. Send them hiking together. Have them depend on one another.
We had forms back then, not the american model of year one from your very first school and so on, so first year in secondary school was form 1. (I have no idea what this is called now). This was split into 7 grades from A-G - form 1A for the academically brightest and so on. This meant basically, you got to do Latin. Each of these grades had a form room which was mainly for registration morning and afternoon. Each form was taught separately - I don't remember much interaction either - other than for games. At form 3, you started to choose your subjects for o levels and then depending on the class sizes, there was some mixing of pupils from other forms.
Regarding Harry et al, they do have interaction with other houses in class, but they don't seem to mix very much, I agree. And the teachers could have done a lot more to foster inter-house relations as you say, if only to prevent slytherin being so isolated from the rest of the school
Each homeroom has a homeroom teacher - in elementary school that is the teacher who teaches most lessons, in middle and highschool that can be a teacher of any of that class' subjects. The homeroom teacher is responsible for all administrative matters regarding the students in a room. Additionally s/he has a weekly hour that is supposed to be dedicated to assorted extra-curricular discussions - either the teacher or the students would present a topic of interest (could be anything from politics to someone's hobby or volunteering activity) followed by a class discussion. Some of my homeroom teachers were quite on top of social matters in the room - they knew who was having trouble at home, who was friendless or being picked on, and I know of a few cases where a teacher intervened and helped. OTOH I recall at least one teacher who had no idea.
We tended to have classrooms devoted to certain subjects and moved around the school accordingly- so, my form room one year was the Geography room, which, as I didn't take geography past o level, I never went into other than 10 minutes in the morning after assembly and 10 minutes in the afternoon.
I know that there are fanfics, mine included, where a teacher tries to promote inter-House cooperation by partnering students from different Houses together for projects, or maybe organizing some kind of inter-House activity. However, in canon, the teachers apparently see no danger in the division between the Houses. The only thing close to this that we see in the books is Dumbledore's Army, although that's organized by Hermione rather than a teacher, and again, it leaves out Slytherin.
-- ioannina --
Certainly, you have a point with the points. :-)
And with Ginny and Luna, too. It seems a bit weird, to share classes with people for at least 5 years and still be strangers, but you are right, they were.
Probably the club activities could help, bud, sadly, we do not see them. I recall only the chess club spoken about, and only once (as a reason, why somebody cannot play Quidditch).
-- ioannina --
We know they both live in the same village and that the Weasleys KNOW the Lovegoods live there, since they were discussed in bk4 in regards to the portkey to the Quidditch Cup. True, Cedric lives in the same town and doesn't seem to be a particular friend of any of the Weasley boys, but the Weasley boys have each other to play with growing up
Luna is not only actually the same age as Ginny but would be the only available choice for a female friend locally. -- Hwyla
That is, for what we have our own imagination, isn´t it? :-)
-- ioannina --
The lack of Slytherin participation was the precise reason why I found DH to be a disappointment. I felt that the other books were building up to inter-house cooperation - just look at the Sorting Hat's song - and then the last book just fell flat. Slughorn says that 'Slytherin house did its part', but that was only because Snape gave half of his life to spy. Snape got no appreciation until after his death, and we don't know if he got any afterward either. Slughorn did fight Voldemort, but we don't know how much he did previously. He made such a big show of hiding his head in the sand in HBP.
I had high hopes that one of the Malfoys would rebel, but that never came to be either. Pansy's willingness to sacrifice Harry might make sense in a Slytherin way, but it just served to amplify the differences and hostility between the houses.
The very fact that Albus Severus despairs of being sorted into Slytherin shows that nothing much as changed. Slytherin House is still as segregated as ever.
Regarding the Malfoys - I think they did rebel, but they did it in a sensible and non-showy way so that they wouldn't die for their rebellion. Terri makes an excellent case that Draco could have handed the DA to the Carrows any time - he was a very experienced user of the Room of Requirement. He also knew how the fake Galleons worked (as he tells Dumbledore in HBP). The fact that the Carrows did not catch the DA is evidence that he did neither of these things. However becasue Slytherins have the sense to disguise their rebellion they never get acknowledged for it.
Kids who love the comfort of a group where consensus rules would feel at home in Hufflepuff. A Ravenclawish kid would *hate* being in Hufflepuff; they would never leave you alone for a minute, they were always hostile when you have ideas that deviated from the Hufflepuff norm. A Ravenclaw kid would hate Gryffindor even more; Gryff tend to bully kids who like to read or sit quietly. Gryffs are never quiet. Gryff are loud, brash, sporty, in your face.
But a lonely, abused kid or a shy kid would feel wonderful in Hufflepuff (and run screaming from Ravenclaw or Gryffindor).
So, Houses are fine with me. What is wrong with Hogwart's Houses is that it has a House for Designated Bad Kids. This has nothing to do with characteristics or the kind of environment a kid could blossom in. Slytherin's 'characteristics' have nothing to do with the kind of child they are, unless you think that 'cunning' and 'ambitious' have anything to do with characteristics. They might as well have been the House of 'envy' or the House of 'deceitfulness'.
Slytherin has been set up as the Anti-House. What is 'ambition' (in the Potterverse sense - in Real Life ambition is not treated and displayed as the ultimate evil) other than leadership gone wrong? What is 'cunning' other than wit and intelligence used for the wrong purposes? What is 'ambition' and 'cunning' other than trying to decieve those who think in terms of the collective good?
This is why early fans had difficulty believing that JKR had purposefully written Slytherin as the Bad House; weren't Gryffindors ambitious for wanting to win at Quidditch, wanting to be the best, biggest, loudest, shiniest, they argued. Weren't Ravenclaws cunning sometimes if they used that formidable wit and knowledge?
Slythering is the Designated Common Enemy of all the other Houses.'Look', JKR said, 'they are the Nasty Ones, the Ugly Ones, the ones with all the nasty characteristics that our collective memory can come up with and, and this is the clincher, you needn't feel sorry for them because they *think they are better than you*!'
And so all the Potterverse characters and Real Life readers are totally prepared to laugh when they see an adult bouncing a Slytherin against the ground again and again and again. Slytherins are the Common Enemy Of All and not quite human anyway and hey, serves them right! They shouldn't have felt better than us, shouldn't they?
It's not the competing that brings kids to hate another group.
I've got no patience for idiots who have started to prohibit games like musical chairs in kindergartens because it 'makes the kiddies competitive and everybody is speshuuuulll!!'
Competing is healthy. One competes against others and one competes against eachother to be the best one can be.
Merely dividing kids in groups so they can compete against eachother isn't dangerous. What is needed for kids (or indeed adults) to hate another group is that the Other Group gets constantly vilified, gets labeled with everything 'we' are against, and an authority figure who constantly validates these prejudices.
The Potter books has all these three. Slytherins are constantly badmouthed by the author as well as the characters. Constantly described in perjorative terms. Slytherins are cowardly, racist, think they are better than the rest, stupid, cunning, bad at sports, unsportmanlike, ugly, you name it. And finally, in Dumbledore we have the perfect enabler, indeed instignator of all that hate.
Alison
Dumbledore who snatches Slytherin's thriumph away by randomly giving points at the last minute, Dumbledore who constantly undermines Slytherins' Head of House's authority, Dumbledore who praises Harry for not wanting to be in Slytherin.
We've also got the perfect authority figure to tell us of the evilness of Slytherins in JK Rowling herself.
Sorry Miss Rowlings, I don't fall that easily for propaganda of that kind. I'm a historian. I can smell gas.
However this cannot happen at Hogwarts because it is a rivalry between the good guys and the House of Evil, so it is right and proper that they would be at each others' throats. Integrating the Houses would cause the spread of Evil Influence all over the place, while the current system isolates the Evil in one place. (On LeakyLounge one of the most common justifications given to the continued existence of Slytherin House is that it keeps them away from other students.)
Regarding my objection to Sorting by character: while being a single Ravenclaw among a group of Hufflepuffs or Gryffindors does not sound inviting I do think a ballanced mix of personality types and learning styles is a good thing, as long as there are enough students that each one has several compatible students in the class. (BTW I too am a Ravenclaw to the extreme, but I never had the kind of problems you and others describe. Can't say I was among the top in popularity, but then I didn't want to, anyway. I never lacked people who were friendly to me and I was never marginalized, bullied or denigrated for being the geek I am. At most I had people attempting to butter me up for homework help, people using me as their excuse - 'if Oryx can't do it don't expect us to be capable of doing it' and people feeling very proud if they got 2% more than me on an exam. This may have been cultural, I attended a school that was proud of its geekiness.)
Growing up in the 1960's in rural Australia and bussing it 2 hours to the local high school was just the *start* of the major culture shock. If you showed you were at all smart (don't stick your head above the trenches, it will be blown off) then you got your head flushed down the toilet repeatedly by the other students. Not to mention being belted up on a regular basis while waiting for the bus home. I only learned a few years ago that I'm a high-functioning autistic (well above-average IQ, no social skills whatsoever, blunt to the point of brusqueness, with a talent for hyperlexia) so I really do feel for Snape-the-teenager, who, I feel, is "my kind of people".
Alison
But where to start...
The Grumpy Old Woman in me wants to say something like " in my time, teachers weren't there to make kids 'play nice', except in kindergarten." By the time they were eleven, they knew how to behave like civilized human being and that things like fighting and bullying were socially unacceptable.
I know I sound like a priggish tart, but seriously, in my time kids were *supposed* to behave. Fighting and bullying were punished, just as any other transgression, but the teacher's main job was to *teach*. It was the children’s job to *learn* and to *behave*.
Teachers are not supposed to play ‘thought police’ and worry about why one kid doesn’t like another kid. It doesn’t matter if two kids don’t like each other. It happens. As long as they keep from violence and disrupting the class, why should a teacher be concerned? Because one day when they are adults they would still dislike each other? Well, that happens too. As long as they don’t act on their dislike, what’s the problem? Do you like everybody you meet? No, of course not. Do you attack them four to one, smash them into a bloody pulp or carve insults in their faces? No, of course not. Why not? Because for one, you are a civilized human being in a normal, civilized world and two, because we live in a civilized world, such things are against the law, and if you break the law, no matter who you are, you will bear the consequences of your behaviour.
And there’s the rub. The Wizarding World is not a normal, civilized society and Hogwarts is but a reflection of that world (or vice versa).
That’s why I think that if the Sorting Hat would be burned and the Houses demolished, things would still not improve. In fact, they would get worse for most.
The Wizarding World. Dreadful place. A place with fascist overtones. Where the ruling culture loves heroism and mindless action for actions sake. Where intelligence is suspect, and loyalty and hard work is seen as only for duffers.
Imagine the Common Room of Mixed House A. It consists of former ‘claws, ‘puffs, Slyths and a couple of Gryffs, among whom the Weasley twins. One of them, a quiet, studious kid wants to read. The twins decide to have ‘fun’. The kid’s book gets thrown in the fire, he gets hexed for being such a 'nightmare' for wanting to get good grades, etc. The kid would have to buckle down and accept it. Worse, he would have to laugh at his own degradation, because if he got mad (like Young Sev did when the Marauders bullied him) and refused to accept the 'victim' position, he'd be considered a 'bad sport' and a 'whiner', or worse, a 'pompous ass' and Merlin protect you if you'd be considered a pompous ass! The teachers wouldn’t protect you, that’s for sure. The teachers are, after all, members of society, and society loves a ‘manly boy’ who, cleanlimbed and rosycheeked, pounds the pale bookish kid into the ground.
Look at the way Percy is treated. He gets ridiculed for being prefect, ridiculed for being Head Boy, ridiculed for wanting good grades, ridiculed for wanting to follow the rules. He gets mashed parsnip flung in his face at the dinner table and Ginny and the twins argue among themselves who threw the stuff, for both want to claim the 'prank'. They are *proud* that they threw food in their brother's face. And Percy has to take it.
And remember, Percy is a Gryffindor. Being a Gryff didn’t protect him from being bullied by other Gryffs. Percy lives in a world that favors bullies, period. Whether you take away the labels of ‘Gryffindor’ or ‘Ravenclaw’ wouldn’t matter. As long as the world they live in considers the Twins ‘loveable jokesters’ instead of the vicious bullying thugs they are, nothing will change.
Alison
Pretty obvious, isn't it? She suffers from Bad Boy Syndrome.
We know (well, we think we know) the Slyth subculture, which is bitter and consists of latching onto the newest Dark Lord that presents themselves in the hope *this* time things might change.
But is there such a thing as a Hufflepuff subculture? Or a 'claw subculture?
I loathe these books because of its evil overtones, I've made it no secret, but I also loathe them because of their... dullness, for lack of words. Think about it! How much more interesting would these books have been if we had caught a glimpse of a Ravenclaw uncle, who was an Unspeakable, or one of those Ministry wizards who researched things like that idiotic veil, and it turned out that Ravenclaws presented a large, intellectual subculture which were amongst themselves divided; one side not caring about Voldemort, as long as their projects got funded and the other side more politically aware? Or a revalation about a subculture of Hufflepuff who for years are trying to get a more socialist agenda working (I can see Ron Weasley scathingly parrotting the twins here again)
But no, the books are written through the eyes of someone in love with the leading culture, the Gryffindor culture, and so three quarters of the WW remains unexplored...
I know I sound like a priggish tart, but seriously, in my time kids were *supposed* to behave. Fighting and bullying were punished, just as any other transgression, but the teacher's main job was to *teach*. It was the children’s job to *learn* and to *behave*.
I don't know about that, I didn't grow up in a particularly civilized society :) (though at least it was one that did not penalize geekiness and love of learning; being the fat kid, the new kid, the kid with the weird accent was a different story - fortunately not mine). And teachers saw themselves as the ones whose duty was to tame the masses. To a degree it may have worked, by the later school years the level of victimization was most significantly reduced.
The British Wizarding World is engaged in a cycle of violence. A brutal society raises brutal kids who become part of that brutal society. If anyone has the chance of breaking that cycle these are the teachers of the only school of that society. Had I seen in the epilogue that instead of having Neville become the Herbology teacher he or Luna were appointed as teachers of a new course, something along the lines of magical philosophy and ethics, I would have felt that though it might be too late for Harry's generation, at least least the next generation had the hope to grow up more open-minded.
And remember, Percy is a Gryffindor. Being a Gryff didn’t protect him from being bullied by other Gryffs.
Unfortunately neither did being a Ravenclaw protect Luna from bullying by her own Housemates. I wonder if she sought the friendship of Harry and co because she was feeling lonely in her House or if she was bullied because her Housemates suspected she was a closet Gryffindor.
We see in canon Gryffindors bullying Slytherins, Gryffindors bullying Gryffindors, Slytherins bullying Gryffindors, Ravenclaws bullying Ravenclaws and arguably Hufflepuffs bullying a Gryffindor they thought was being unfair to a Hufflepuff.
Oh we just barely get some hints about the internal workings of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw Houses. In Ravenclaw we have the riddles at the door, we have comments by Luna about what her friends have to say (for example their low opinion of Hagrid's teaching). I suppose the examples of detached Ravenclaws who spend their lives in ivory towers would be Ollivander and Flamel, while the politically aware ones are like Xenophilus. Hard to say about Bathilda Bagshot - she was a historian, but she avoided dealing with the 20th century. And Quirrell - the one who was full of ideas about good and evil but was converted to Voldemort's amorality - I think this was a case of philosophical conversion, he became a true believer. Just enough to tease fanfic writers into coming up with their interpretations, but not enough to be satisfactory in itself. (Of course the classification of the above as Ravenclaws, other than Xenophilus, is fanon.)
For Hufflepuff we see Ernie and Hannah protecting Justin from the heir of Slytherin. We have Cedric unable to convince his Housemates to abandon the Potter stinks campaign. And there is the curious case of Zacharias Smith - canon does not provide an explanation as to what makes him tick at all, though I have seen several hypotheses offered by fans. Guessing who is an adult Hufflepuff is even harder and more controversial than sniffing out Ravenclaws.
I find it difficult to put into words what I mean exactly, mainly because English is not my first language, but even so.. still, I'm going to try :-)
What I meant with the whole 'civilised' thing, is; all children, all over the world are born into a culture. Each culture has its own rules of conduct, rules of morality, rules of permitted behaviour. All children are born with an inborn thirst and need to learn those rules. By the time they are six years old all children, wether they live in Arizona, the Amazon jungle, Turkey, China or France, will have learned those rules. They will know how to adress other children and how to adress adults.
Now, my culture's rules include such things as 'don't be cruel to animals', 'all people are important', 'being kind is rewarded, being nasty punished', 'hard work is rewarded', 'we all have something to contribute' and 'the strong should protect the weak'. Its in everything a child encounters. In our mother's arms we hear, "don't pull kitty's tail, you'll hurt poor kitty" and we get read Beatrix Potter's Squirrell Nutkin and the like. We listen to and watch video's of fairytales where poor but kind maidens or youngest sons will become queens and kings because they were kind to mice or helped old women carry their loads, whilst their lazy, greedy, mean siblings get blinded or get their toes cut off.
The rules of the Wizarding World are the direct opposite of mine (and yours, I suspect)
The rules of the WW are:
Might is Right. Who is the strongest Rules.
Who is weaker will have to seek protection of the stronger.
Those who are weak will be bullied and they deserve to be bullied for being weak.
The books are written, not from our culture describing an alien culture and condemning it, but from the WW's culture, proclaiming it to be right and just.
Aside: it irritated me from the very first book onwards how Harry could break schoolrules and be rewarded, could be 'cheeky' and openly disruptive and belligerent in class and not be put into place by the rest of the faculty, but when you take the WW rules in account it makes sense: The Boy Who Lived is considered to be a Top Dog from the start. When he breaks rules, it's okay because as a Top Dog he is not expected to follow other people's rules. When he is rude to Snape or pulls one over Snape (stealing from him or sneaking behind his back) it is presented as if this is a great thing because JKR is showing Harry's superiority to Snape. If they were dogs I'm sure that JKR would show dog-Harry pee over dog-Snape's markings.
Reading it with my culture's social rules in the back of my head, I'm appalled that such a brat gets away with such horrid behaviour and that the author condones this. Reading it with the WW's culture's social rules in my mind it makes sense: the author is merely establishing the 'hero' of the story as Totally Superior to the one who would dare to expect him to follow the rules just like everybody else. You don't become Top Dog in the WW if you follow pesky *rules*!
So, yes, the Gryffs bully, the 'Puffs bully, the 'Claws bully and the Slyths bully. But that is my point; in the WW bullying is seen as perfectly normal behaviour.
The WW exists out of a very small minority of 'pureblood families' and a large majority of mixed blooded wizards. They *all* think that the best wizard is the wizard who is the strongest and who will protect all others from other strong wizards who would use 'dark magic'. Dark magic being spells that would give a single wizard too much power over another, so no-one but true Top Dogs are allowed to use them. Harry finally showed that he was ready to be the Top Dog of the WW by using Unforgivables.
The leading culture of the WW (which includes most if not all Houses) considers bullying to be okay.
tbc
part deux
So, the four Houses represent a microcosmos of the WW. Are the Houses a reflection of the WW or is the WW a continuation of the House system? There's the rub.
I agree that the four existing Houses should be abolished. But not because the House system itself is faulty. Merely have children compete in groups doesn't make for such awful behaviour. What does make for such behaviour is the assignment (by 'authority') of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Think of the famous Stanford Prison experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_p
So I still think that if you want to change things, the WW should understand what they are doing. If they really want a better world, a world where Dark Lords are less likely to rise, things will have to change.
Yes, maybe having no Houses at all would be a start, but as long as children are not only permitted but encouraged to bully others, as long as the staff gives the general impression that hard work and intelligence are less than 'bravery' and physical prowess, things will not improve, and those who tend to work hard, or those who are intelligent will lack the support of likeminded children.
Re: part deux
Slughorn is an examlpe of 'good' ambition, helping students to form connections and succeed in society. We don't see much of his past teachings, but he didn't seem to counteract the anti-Slytherin attitude of the rest of the school. We know that Snape was teased mercilessly then and almost killed in the Shrieking Shack, and then the pants incident occurred *afterward*. Snape's near-death experience wasn't enough for Slughorn to protect him. Small wonder that almost all Slytherins in Snape's year turned to the 'dark side'.
When Snape becomes Head of House, I believe that he further widens the divide, since it seems the only way to preserve House dignity and pride. It's Slytherin against the world, and the only ones that they can count on are each other. He can point to the example where Dumbledore gives away their House cup at the last second, seemingly on a whim. Though Snape is secretly fighting against Voldemort's influence, it's hard to point the kids in the right direction when even the Headmaster is biased. I also think it's a shame that the only Slytherin Headmasters that we know of (Phineas and Severus just might be the only two) are so despised as well.