Dumbledore is a bad, bordering on terrible, headmaster of Hogwarts. This is not the Draco and Lucius Malfoy line of reasoning that he’s the worst headmaster because he’s a ‘muggle lover’ and lets too many of them into the school. He’s also clearly not a bad person or a terrible wizard, he’s the best and obviously plays a crucial role in defeating Voldemort. I just don’t believe he should be doing the job of headmaster.

My argument for this is based on three main principles:

• Negligence
• Poor hiring decisions
• What does he actually do?

Negligence

By negligence, we can also expand this to include a lot of unnecessary risk-taking.  This mostly crops up in the first two books, allowing Harry to put his life at risk in order to save the school on multiple occasions. We are told early on in book 1 that, “Gringotts is the safest place in the world fer anything yeh want ter keep safe — ‘cept maybe Hogwarts.” Except maybe Hogwarts. In reality, Gringotts is safer than Hogwarts but by storing a dangerous and much desired item in a school for 11-18 year olds, you are actually attracting unsavoury characters to try to steal it, putting children at risk. Of course, the reason they move the stone is because there is an attempted break-in at Gringotts but wouldn’t it make more sense to move it to a heavily guarded or better protected vault in the Bank?  Quirrell is backed by a weak Voldemort and to me, there isn’t any real indication that he could have broken into vault 713. The vault was very deep in the bank and required a goblin to stroke the door with his finger in order to gain entry. Having a powerless Voldemort in the back of his head wouldn’t have made much difference in my view, meaning that we’re looking at just a regular wizard trying to steal from the Bank, presumably something that Gringotts security has procedures in place to handle. By placing the stone in Hogwarts, Dumbledore is inviting danger to the school.

Following up from this, he seemingly suspects that Quirrell is bad news, and yet does very little about it. When he says to Snape, “Keep an eye on Quirrell, won’t you?” this tells us that he’s aware that everything is not quite what it seems with the stammering schoolmaster, and yet he’s content to let him teach 12 year old children in close proximity. If he suspected something at the beginning, the troll at Hallowe’en should have been the clear warning. As readers, we are nudged to believe that Snape is the bad guy but we are kept in the dark about things until the end, while Dumbledore is aware of these factors and is unable to piece 2 + 2 together. A troll breaks into the dungeon at Hallowe’en. Quirrell’s speciality is trolls and there is no way that Dumbledore would not know this. Presumably Quirrell’s work history or education experience would have listed his talents with trolls, maybe a PhD in Troll Studies or Troll Relations and then, HE PUT A TROLL IN THE GAUNTLET TO GET TO THE STONE (side note, what does this troll live off for a year?). Come on man, figure it out.

Finally, this is all compounded by his decision to let Harry take on Quirrell and Voldemort at the age of 11 years old. “It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could….” – this is great that it all worked out for everyone. However, in a different scenario, Quirrell decides not to physically attack Harry for no reason and instead use his wand to simply kill him. Then Dumbledore would have to deal with some very real questions from the Daily Prophet and the Ministry of Magic regarding the death of a young boy on his watch as he allowed events to play out.

After what can only be described as a bad job in Book 1, he contrives to be even worse in Book 2. Again, an issue of negligence that he allows the school to suffer through multiple attacks on students without really considering closing down or postponing school. He was a teacher at the school 50 years ago when the Chamber of Secrets was initially opened that led to the death of a student (Moaning Myrtle). He should have been on high alert when Mrs. Norris was attacked and a message daubed on the wall warning “enemies of the heir”. Instead, he sits back and watches as more students are hospitalised; Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater. Mercifully, there are no “killins” and he is removed from his post by the governors. Why not consider closing the school after the first, second or third attacks? What is he doing to prevent these attacks? Again, he knows that Myrtle is the one who died 50 years ago, surely his first port of call would be to ask her how and where she died and work backwards from there. Granted, he wouldn’t have been able to access the Chamber without speaking parseltongue, however, once Harry emerged as one during the Duelling Club, he should have frogmarched him to the bathroom to bust the case wide open. Similarly, there’s implications in the first book that he knows “just about everything that goes in this school” and yet doesn’t piece together the fact that Ginny is the one opening the Chamber. Perhaps he could have hung out invisibly in the bathroom to see who opens it. Basically, he could have taken any number of actions but doesn’t, instead, hiding in his tower and allowing a basilik to slither around his school.

At the end of the book, exams are cancelled as a school treat. A school treat! Its McGonagall who announces it but obviously such a big decision would have to be approved at the highest level, aka Dumbledore. The whole purpose of keeping the school open was presumably to ensure that students were educated, then he cancels the exams! What kind of system is this? His top priority is education and yet he fails to live up to this by not holding exams to ensure that the students have actually learned anything over the past year.

Poor Hiring Decisions

Out of all the teachers we’re exposed to during the 6 books (not including Deathly Hallows since he’s dead by then), which ones are actually good? The 4 heads of Houses seem to know what they’re doing, Professor Vector gets high marks and maybe Horace Slughorn and Remus Lupin are also competent. Dumbledore hires 5 Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers (Umbridge is appointed), of which 2 of them are Death Eaters/servants of Lord Voldemort in disguise! That’s 40% of his DADA hires! Another is a werewolf who goes rampaging on school grounds and we also have perhaps the worst teacher of them all, Gilderoy Lockhart.

His only good DADA hire is basically appointing Snape, who aside from being an asshole, seems like he gets results as a teacher. I don’t even give Dumbledore credit for hiring Slughorn since he was hired originally by previous headmaster Armando Dippet, so it’s not as if he pored over CVs, cover letters and interviews to find a suitable Potions master. Sybil Trelawney is also objectively a bad teacher but you can partly attribute that to Divination not being a real subject and the definite need to keep her in-house. Worth mentioning that she progressively turns into an alcoholic over books 5 and 6 and Dumbledore doesn’t step in and send her to Witches Alcoholic Anonymous. I’d be pretty concerned if my child was being taught by an alcoholic who openly drinks during the day. Appointing Firenze was perhaps a step in the right direction but its unclear whether he’s really a top notch hire since the subject doesn’t lend itself to learning.

Among his most egregious hiring decisions is that of Hagrid, who even the main trio can barely defend as a good teacher. Setting aside the fact that he’s not even a qualified wizard, there is evidence early on in books 3 and 4 that he is not up to the job. Why not just give him tips and advice, maybe sit in on a class and give him feedback? Nah, just let him flounder instead, put the lives of children at risk from dangerous creatures and not suitably educate them, much better idea. I also quibble with the fact that Hagrid immediately becomes ‘Professor Hagrid’ once appointed to the Care of Magical Creatures post. What has he done exactly to earn that honorific? Again, he didn’t even make it through high school, let alone take higher education or a teacher training course. In the muggle world, it takes a PhD and years of experience as a Lecturer, Reader and Senior Lecturer to become a Professor but in the magical world, Professorships are thrown about willy-nilly. It is immediately apparent to the students and Umbridge that substitute teacher Professor Grubbly-Plank is a better teacher than Hagrid and yet he is foisted on them for the duration of the books.

What Does He Actually Do?

So if he’s negligent during crises, making poor hiring decisions and not even teaching Harry Occlumency in book 5, what does he actually do every day?

I’m not a headmaster so I can’t quite attest to their responsibilities but my assumption would be a combination of; a bunch of admin/general management, helping with the syllabus and ensuring teachers are performing at the highest possible level. We can only assume that he’s spending his time working on some real painstaking admin work basically every day of the school year. By Book 6, he’s spending most of his time trying to research into the personal history of Lord Voldemort. Seems like a massive overstepping of his role as an educator. Are the public, current parents and alumni paying his salary to not do his job and/or fund his trips across the UK to hunt down Horcruxes? Fiscally irresponsible and misallocation of funds.

Importantly, he seems to have very little role in setting a syllabus for the students, giving wide latitude to his (unqualified) teaching staff to teach whatever they want. The results of this include Gilderoy Lockhart simply reading his books to the class, Hagrid introducing children to an illegal breed of creature that has no further application in the world and Mad-Eye Moody USING UNFORGIVEABLE CURSES ON 14 YEAR OLDS. It starts at the top and he displays no interest in ensuring the students are leaving the school as qualified witches and wizards.

A crazy idea I had at the end of the series, is that maybe Dumbledore should fill the constantly vacant DADA position with the guy who defeated the previous greatest dark wizard of all time prior to Voldemort. Grindelwald is largely regarded as such and presumably took prodigious skill in order to defeat him, perhaps Dumbledore could pass down some of this wisdom to the students of Hogwarts. Failing that, our headmaster at school would jump in and help out with a class. Dumbledore does no such thing, not even subbing for Lupin when he goes out with a case of werewolfitis. Maybe after many decades as a Transfiguration professor, he has checked out mentally, preferring to delegate and basically just coasting on his fame for the rest of his career. When it comes to protecting the lives of his students, his gross negligences means that ‘checking out’ makes him quite simply, a “barmy old codger” who is not up to the task of headmaster of Hogwarts.