Aghast, I Say!

Last week during the last day of summer term, I was giving a lecture on Performance Feedback Systems (also known as Public Posting). 

I gave a few examples about how public posting is used in society, such as when workplaces post those "44 Days Without An Accident" signs;

organizations use huge, fake, wooden thermometers to track and display funds raised for something; and police departments place electronic speed monitoring and display devices in target enforcement zones to slow down drivers.

As a fun segue to how public posting should be used in the classroom, I was going to point out that Hogwarts had a public posting system. Whenever a Hogwarts teacher gave or took points from a House based on the appropriate or inappropriate behavior of a student in that house, that same number of marbles appeared in or disappeared from large jars in a common space in the school.

I cannot for the life of me recall if this was in just the books, just the movies, or both. So, before I began using this fabulous example, I asked who in the class had read the Harry Potter books.

Only one student raised her hand.

I'm still aghast.