Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix seems to be about the evil of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Some of you may take umbrage at this, but a certain character is a dead ringer for Margaret Spellings. I don’t have to tell you who; if you see the movie it will be obvious.
Margaret Spellings tells the students that Hogwarts is a failing school. She says they will no longer be learning practical arts, but instead will focus solely on theoretical topics that will be on the test. Which is, she proclaims, the whole reason they are at Hogwarts.
Does J.K. Rowling know about NCLB? How could an English author know about the great evil that has befallen American education? But then, watch the movie and see how she describes what is in store for Hogwarts. The drill and kill, etc.
In the movie, the supreme evil of Voldemort returns, but Margaret Spellings is a disciple of the simpering George Bush-like minister of magic who denies that Voldemort has returned. Instead of rallying the populace against Voldemort, the minister of magic declares a crusade to improve education. With nearly all of the clichés of NCLB.
I’ve wondered if Rowling’s inspiration for the evil of Voldemort might have been the Jim Crow South of America. The terrorizing fear of the KKK. The discriminatory treatment of Potter by the Dursleys. The necessity of a separate ghetto-like community away from the muggles, or Whites, to whom they must not reveal their powers. And then the prejudice of the Aryan-like Malfoy and his friends.
It is possible that Rowling refers to the evil of fascism, rather than racism. Certainly she wrote "My most influential writer, without a doubt, is Jessica Mitford. When my great-aunt gave me Hons and Rebels when I was 14, she instantly became my heroine. She ran away from home to fight in the Spanish Civil War ...." The Spanish Civil War, of course, was against Fascism.
But then, Jessica Mitford moved to the United States before World War Two and married an American civil rights lawyer. She became very active in post-war American civil rights activities. One would suspect that Rowling naturally became of aware of Mitford’s work and sought to understand the circumstances of the Jim Crow South and its manifest evil.
It would seem that the fear of a return of Voldemort could refer to Hitler, and fascism, and, of course, the European Jews suffered Jim Crow-like discrimination. But then, Hogwarts is a school, and these are children, for which I don't see a parallel for Hitler. However, Rowling could have been aware that it was children in America who actually confronted Jim Crow in the lunchroom sit-ins, beginning at the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960.
From those sit-ins, where students across America confronted Jim Crow, a leadership conference was held and the Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee was formed (SNCC). According to the Wikipedia entry for Jessica Mitford, her daughter had "a relationship with James Forman, the African American director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee."
From the sit-ins came the Freedom Riders, where, when the adults abandoned the crusade, the college students took it up, confronting the violence in Birmingham and Montgomery. Which led to Martin Luther King, Jr., confronting the Jim Crow laws of Birmingham in a massive confrontation with Bull Connor and the forces of evil. But Bull Connor was on the verge of winning: Dr. King wrote later "As we talked, a sense of doom began to pervade the room. I looked about me and saw that for the first time our most dedicated and devoted leaders were overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness."
What does that have to do with Hogwarts? In his autobiography, Dr. King wrote that they concluded: "If our drive was to be successful, we must involve the students of the community. Even though we realized that involving teenagers and high school students would bring down upon us a heavy fire of criticism, we felt that we needed this dramatic new dimension." And so it was that the call went out to the local children and they responded en mass, confronting Jim Crow and eventually triumphing despite Bull Connor’s turning attack-dogs and fire hoses against the students.
And so Dumbledore’s Army is students organized to confront Voldemort. Students who recognize Voldemort has returned when the officials deny it. Students who conduct secret meetings to organize against the evil, within Hogwarts that the officials attempt to stifle. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was published in 2003. Rowling had to be writing it when the No Child Left Behind Act was being written, and signed into law in January of 2002.
Wikipedia also notes that Margaret Spellings "was one of the principal authors of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act." But at the time she was an "Assistant to the President" to George W. Bush. Would Rowling have known all this? Would she have seen this evil threatening American public schools? Or was there an English version of NCLB that influenced her?
But there it is in the movie, NCLB or something very much like it philosophically, and there is Margaret Spellings or something very much like her. In the high-stakes testing scene of the movie, the students revolt. Could Rowling be suggesting that students in America revolt against the high-stakes testing of NCLB, much as the students of America once confronted and defeated Jim Crow?
You will have to see the movie yourself to decide.