Originally posted by BlackGuardXIII
I remember the news saying that kids reading Harry Potter made a big increase in kids time spent reading. ... The last thing you want when oppressing folks is an educated public.

The assertion that reading Harry Potter classes one as being "educated" is debatable.

Not only is the title of the new Harry Potter book eerie considering what we know about Illuminati and bloodlines, but also

I started reading the new Harry Rotter book ["the half blood prince"!! ] The
first chapter describes how the prime minister of england is trying to calm
people down because there have been a series of disasters in London! [for > example...a bridge collapses, a hurricaine, and the "mysterious" deaths of two politicians!!!]
>
> Then it describes how the prime minister of england is approached by a wizard
> and how he is made aware that witches and wizards still "live in secret all over
> the world" !! The wizard tells the prime minister that they are installing some
> of their "own people" in his cabinet and explains that all the disasters were
> actually caused by fighting in the wizards world!! Now I'm beginning to wonder
> if Rowling is actually writing these books or is just a figurehead for one their
> ghost writers.
>
> In addition the prime minister is told that all his predecessors knew about the
> wizards and the reason it never got out was because each sucessive prime
> minister was afraid "no one would believe him if he revealed it."

It is called fiction. It is something that is, on occasion, written by relatively intelligent and imaginative people. Any resemblance to reality, or real people, living or dead, is purely coincident. Had the book been published with 666 pages, I would probably have agreed with you.

[edit on 19-7-2005 by sigung86]

You make a good point, and I agree that reading fiction is a poor way to become educated. Nevertheless, do you not agree that the explosion of book sales and huge rise in time children spend reading books, any books, is bound to raise their levels and rates of literacy, which is a crucial prerequisite to succeeding in the academic world? I am not saying Harry Potter is making kids smarter, just that the increased reading is raising their vocabulary and literacy. And that is very likely to raise the number of kids who succeed in school. Just like playing a musical instrument raises your likelihood of doing well in math, reading fiction raises your likelihood of comprehending the material they will have to wade through in post secondary institutions.
But, whether that is actually beneficial overall in the long run remains to be seen. The important thing, in my view, is that they learn compassion. It will not be our brains that determine our future success or failure in the coming crunch, but our hearts. We need to all get along, and help each other. Forrest Gump is a great story of how a 'slow' person can make a huge difference in world events because he's a good guy. Hitler was an intellectual genius of the highest calibre, and look what he did.

Don't know... But the book was relly good...