When I was a kid, growing up in the huge BOOM of Harry Potter movies and books, pretty much everyone loved it so much because of the magical essence of the series. Here you have an entire world based in our own, but yet so expansive and surreal. The magical realism casts stars in our eyes that blind us to how little JK Rowling actually thought about anything.

Here is a map of every magical school in the world.

Yes, you're seeing that correctly. That's ONE school per CONTINENT, except Europe, which has THREE, and Australia, which apparently doesn't have one, and only Japanese students can go to the one in Japan, so fück everybody else in Asia, I guess.

Here are the ranges for each school, aka which countries they accept students from:

Hogwarts (Scotland): Scotland, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Wales

Beauxbatons (France): France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium

Castelobruxo (Brazil): All over South America

Durmstrang (Scandinavia): Willing to accept international students, but presumably mainly Northern and Eastern Europe

Ilvermorny (US): All over North America

Mahoutokoro (Japan): Japan

Uagadou (Uganda): All over Africa

This alone shows that JK Rowling doesn't have a clue about how anything works outside of her little bubble. Europe, the second smallest continent, has THREE schools, while everyone in Asia, the largest continent, is screwed over except if they live in Japan? Also, how does the schooling work if you accept people from multiple countries who all speak different languages? DOES SHE REALIZE THAT NOT EVERYBODY IN SOUTH AMERICA SPEAKS THE SAME LANGUAGE?? OR AFRICA??? THERE ARE 2,000 LANGUAGES IN AFRICA.

I don't think JK understands how massive those schools must be in order to house all of the young wizards in an entire continent. As for Ilvermorny, the school is up on a mountaintop, which doesn't seem nearly big enough. Not to mention rivalries. Does she think that everyone will just get along??  NO!!

The South American school also demonstrates JK's lack of awareness of the terrain of the continent.

The difference in elevation and the type of terrain makes travel kinda difficult, especially without an airplane, which wizards don't use. How does she expect everyone to get there??

I'm gonna talk more in-depth about the Eurocentrism in Hogwarts and then about Ilvermorny.

HOGWARTS.

If Hogwarts is placed in Scotland, then why in Merlin's saggy left nutsack is the Hogwarts Express stationed at King's Cross Station in LONDON???? And why does every Hogwarts student have to board the train there? You're telling me that Scottish students have to travel to London just to take a train back to their home country? And what about the people that live in Hogsmeade?

I saw this post on Tumblr and literally cried laughing

Again, despite Hogwarts being literally in Scotland, like 99% of the characters we meet there are English. The only non-English characters I can think of are Oliver Wood, Seamus Finnigan, Luna Lovegood, Hagrid, and... yeah. Plus, as for Oliver, Luna, and (I think) Seamus, none of them are written with accents in the books, which, if you haven't read them, is JK's favorite thing to do (all of Fleur's dialogue eez wreeteen like theez, and eet eez very annoying, an' all of Hagrid's dialogue is written "all righ', are yeh, Harry?")

Like. At this point, she should have just said that Hogwarts was in England if she wasn't going to bother with the rest of the UK and Ireland beyond 1 or 2 characters.

ILVERMORNY.

I'm not sure about you guys, but I remember when the information on Ilvermorny was released. I was in high school and excitedly took the sorting quiz (I'm Puckwudgie). I thought it was super cool how the names were after Native American folklore.

Then I actually read the backstory, and my blood boiled. The school doesn't have Native American founders at all. Where are the founders from?

DING DING DING. Europe. Specifically, Ireland. When I found this out, I was like

The Native American names for the houses were "inspired" by nearby tribes. Apparently, wands were a European invention, which doesn't really make sense, because the whole point is that wandless magic is very difficult to do, so what did everyone else in the world do?? According to the wiki site, Native Americans and wizards prior to the invention of the wand practiced wandless magic, but again, that's supposed to be advanced, so it seems hard to believe that the rest of the world stuck with that before the Europeans saved the day.

This whole backstory of Ilvermorny reflects a HUGE white savior complex, because look at this nice Irish family who founded the first North American school for magic! And used folklore that wasn't theirs! Not to mention that the school was somehow founded 3 years before the Puritans set sail for the US.

I just can't get over the origins of this school. After the attempted genocide of the Native Americans, the laws that were passed in an attempt to harm and restrict them, etc, it cuts so unbearably deep. It's tone-deaf of her to write out an origin story that has nothing to do with the history of North America pre-colonization. I know that immigration is a very important part of the U.S' culture, and that Irish immigrants faced discrimination, but it's horrible of JK to deliberately create a school with no Native founders.

I'm not sure how to even fix this. A few schools for every continent? There are so many things to consider, as I've mentioned before, like rivalries, language barriers, dialects, ease of transportation, etc. It would take a lot of consideration and research in order to do it properly.

I almost would have had no other magic schools revealed at all, that way the fandom could come up with their own theories and schools, than this absolute garbage.