The History of the American Magic Users’ School System
It is known by Wizarding Society that North America has a school, much like the isles of Great Britain. Ilvermorny was fashioned, to a great extent, off of Hogwarts more pronounced characteristics, such as having four houses, a sorting ceremony, and teaching children between the ages of eleven and seventeen years of age.
What is less discussed is how that system didn’t work for us.
It did for a time, when there were only 13 colonies, however, as the country expanded the school became less and less convenient, affordable, and realistic. Add to that, there was a growing urge to keep family close, especially after the American Civil War. American magical parents did not want to send their children away for 9 months out of the year and some couldn’t afford to - many needed the help of their children day to day with their business, such as the bramble leaf farmers of Tennessee who needed the extra hands to separate the leaf from the blackberries as they sold the blackberries to primarily No-Majs and the leaves, primarily to Ilvermorny for potions classes.
Once thought to be the most welcoming and down to earth of the magical schools, Ilvermorny became of symbol of magical elitism to much of the American magical society.
The Alternatives
Homeschooling became quite common, which presented its own set of problems. Some children were never taught, some were taught extremely poorly, and all sets of standards flew out the window - often with physical objects as control was not well taught in general.
Many communities, If there were enough magical folk there to begin with, would transport their children to a single home where they would learn together- it wasn’t uncommon for 3-5 mothers to oversee this. The issue with this was that attention couldn’t be paid to level of understanding and as new children were born and grew, there was a constant influx of absolute beginners.
This proved untenable and so more methods were experimented with.
Out in the West, they would cast an Undetectable Extension Charm on an enclosed carriage and merely fill it up with as many students as they could reach (along with those willing to teach). It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it allowed for more structured learning. In the Midwest, especially northern states such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, Floo Networks were more utilized as large fireplaces were less likely to stand out, allowing for actual school buildings to be built to support the growing classes. Portkeys were used more often in the South than anything else, but the South also had a rather unprecedented number of cities founded and populated entirely by magic users.
What ended up forming were dozens upon dozens of regional schools that functioned more like No-Maj public schools than Ilvermorny. The child would attend school for the afternoon and return home.
MACUSA was initially against these alternative schools, all of which they considered unauthorized and breaking Rappaport’s Law (this was despite the fact that many communities using this alternative schooling set up were not, in fact, using wands but casting techniques and devices native to their own backgrounds. For instance, New Orleans was known for incantatory - the repetition of enchantments without a wand. It was a hybrid form of magic most notably utilized by the Afro-Caribbeans that seemed to be a mixture of the wandless magic used in Africa and the wand incantations of Europe. Occasionally talismans or magnifiers were used to empower an incantatorial spell, but the students were taught both with and without these objects. Note: Incantatory was both considered easier than “true” wandless magic and also wildly unpredictable if performed with little control, such as when a Louisiana Creole boy was frightened by a storm, threw his blanket over his head, and chanted Lumos so vehemently that the entire block lit up. His parents were able to control it quickly enough that most No-Majs that saw it thought it was some bizarre lightning. The Chinese-Americans of the Old West were known for practicing - and teaching - medi-amplification, a technique wherein the magic user would meditate, concentrating on their magical self, and have bouts of intentory (gùhuàn) wherein intention is enough to make magic happen. Some view this as simply wandless magic, but there’s a clear distinction in how the magic is approached and because of that, spells are not actually needed.
The CASI
This divide between the MACUSA and the Unauthorized Wizarding Institutions (named by MACUSA) was one of the motivating factors in forming the CASI or the Committee for Alternative Schooling and Institutions which ultimately led to a more or less benign infiltration of the No-Maj government and formation of a Congressional CASI. To this day, most No-Majs believe the CASI to be a Committee that implements and endorses private schooling, home schooling, and religious schooling, which the Committee doesn’t dispute because it serves its purposes just fine. Of note, perhaps, is how in the 40s, as so much of the Wizarding World was preoccupied with the war in Europe, a No-Maj was appointed to the Committee by mistake. He sat on the Committee for 10 years and if asked what the CASI did, he would give a vague response that confused both himself and the one who asked and then wander off, slightly befuddled.
The CASI’s main purpose was to redirect just enough revenue to facilitate the upkeep and sustained use of these regional schools - the initial building could sometimes be finagled and land deeds could be purchased if the school/region had no grounds or no building, but that was kept to a minimum and often locales had to raise their own funds for such an endeavor.
The formation of the CASI almost caused a civil war, but MACUSA realized that numbers were not on its side. A vast majority of the American magical population was for the use of regional schools and would fight to defend their right to teach their children how they wanted. After much negotiation and capitulation - and leading to the repeal of Rapparport’s Law - the CASI was incorporated into MACUSA. A strict tenant of that incorporation, however, was that regions could form and institute schooling how they wished, with minimal to no oversight by MACUSA, thus forming the American Magic Users’ School System, or the AMUSS.
Ilvermorny is still in place and while all American witches, wizards, and magic users can attend, it is largely viewed in the same vein as private schools are among the No-Maj.
The Transportation
Today, the instituted method of arrival for regional schools involves a strictly monitored portkey system and Extended busses. Apollo Fleet was founded for exactly this reason and you can find an Apollo Fleet office in almost every city because of this. To No-Majs, it is merely another charter bus company but to magical children, it’s their bus. Children can walk, be dropped off, or Floo to their nearest Apollo stop. There’s a checklist for each stop or registered children and authorized parents/guardians to control who can and can’t travel to the school. The children are let into the school specific waiting area, one of the several portkey rooms inaccessible to the No-Maj populace. In the morning, the school’s portkey is used to transport everyone to the secondary stop (special harnesses were made specifically to stop dropping children between the initial and secondary stops). At the secondary stop, the children in the portkey rooms - often coming from several locations - are put on an Extended bus and then it’s off to the next secondary stop - always in the area but there is a Quickening Charm, not unlike the English Knight Bus.
Some arguments were made about this system taking too much time or being too complicated, but it was implemented after a bombing on one of the schools in the late 1920s, explained to the No-Majs as happening for political reasons but understood to have occurred when a Scourer gained access to a portkey that transported him directly to the school. After this, all schools were required to have anti-portkey charms as well as anti-apparition charms and absolutely no connections with any Floo networks. Apollo Fleet is a MACUSA run business, which means that nearly all of the employees have had Auror training - special programs were put in place to train new employees in a vein not dissimilar to the No-Maj police academies. They do not need to be as proficient as actual Aurors, merely able to defend and detect - it wouldn’t do to let in someone masquerading as one of the registered children, after all.
Because of this, the initial and secondary stop system is considered sufficient means of protecting their schools, which to the unsuspecting eye looks like a typical No-Maj school. (Most schools are also now protected with the Fidelius Charm, but that isn’t considered sufficient as so many have to be let in to begin with).
The Ages
A marked difference to other countries’ schools, actually, was implemented shortly after the bombing incident. Nearly every region has formed separate schools for the different ages. The main reason for this was to prevent catastrophic tragedy - the bombing had nearly wiped out the entire generation of magic users in its region. The different schools - primary, secondary, and tertiary, though those terms are used almost exclusively in system and not by the students or parents - are viewed as insurance. If another tragedy occurs, it will at least be for only a single age group and not the entire 4-18 year old populace.
Ilvermorny to this day only intakes students 11 years of age through to 17 years of age, like the European schools before, but the AMUSS was specifically designed to better assist the general American Magic User and so that meant taking the children earlier. No-Maj and Magic User populations are so overlapped here that it didn’t make sense to allow children to go so long without learning some control over their abilities. The primary schools, therefore, teach some of the most basic techniques in order to give them children structure in which to develop their magic. Mostly, history and theory are taught at this time, as well as No-Maj concepts that are needed to be successful in either world - math, language arts, general American history - and as the student grows and moves onto the secondary and then the tertiary school, the No-Maj lessons lose more and more focus as proper magical theory and practical applications can be utilized.
While not technically involved in the AMUSS, the Association for Magical Child Care (the AMCC) was recently formed to provide safe daycare options for working parents/guardians. It should be noted that “safe” here refers mostly towards No-Maj children who are occasionally injured, confunded, or generally stunned by children of magic users who are far too young to have any control over magical abilities. The AMCC helps to set up and monitor magic user friendly/only daycares. Children are accepted into these daycares typically until schooling age, though some will watch children of all ages after/before school hours and on weekends. Daycares that provide such accommodations are typically allotted their own private portkey for travel to and from the secondary stop mentioned above, making them the only non-Apollo Fleet location involved in the transportation process.
The Mascots
While Ilvermorny has the different houses, the regional schools don’t. Population isn’t always high enough to support such a system but more than that, the AMUSS decided that a singular mascot could bring a school together where different houses institutionalized dividedness. Instead of having a House Cup or playing sports against other houses, competition was between other schools.
There are as many mascots as there are schools - though some do overlap. A popular mascot is the dragon, popular enough that most schools that use it prefer to pick a breed. There are several schools, mostly coastal, that have some form of mer as their mascot. But largely, there’s a regional basis for it. For instance, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, having one set of schools for the entire peninsula, had originally been the U.P. Lycanthropes in honor of the Wolf-Man of Michigan. (The Lycan Association of the Americas has been attempting to get them to change it, to no avail so far, though now only the tertiary school has the lycanthrope as it’s mascot.)
One instance of particular note are the Las Vegas Animagi - while technically being students from all over Nevada, the tertiary school is widely considered to be defined by Vegas. The students there are actively taught animagi theory and nearly all can take animal form by graduation. There were rumors that the school taught children how to become skin-walkers, perpetuated by detractors of the AMUSS, but that is untrue. What is true is that Lorraine Ashwinder, when attempting to invent a cloak of transfiguration - putting it on would, in theory, transform the person into someone else, who’s likeness was woven into the cloak - unknowingly invented a form of transfiguration that many compare to what little is known about the skin-walker legends. But she was a graduate and never taught the Las Vegas Animagi. Her cloak has since been banned by MACUSA, who believed it too powerful and convenient for impersonating other magic users and possibly evading arrest.
Magicians or Magical Inheritors
Known by many different names throughout the world, the original system for dealing with those that inherited magic but were unable to utilize it themselves was not unlike the European procedure. NOTE: The use of the term “squib” has been considered derogatory for nearly a century, with a marked trend away from the term after the 1926 Obscurial Incident in New York. There were protests and campaigns. A rallying cry of “Even Squibs Have Magic in Them” became common to hear in big cities and transfer points, anyplace with large populations.
It wasn’t entirely for the benefit of the magical inheritors, the term that was first coined by Macky Rowdes, one of the more well known inheritors who went on to publish some of the most well known socio-magical texts known to American magic users, as well as father six proficient magic users themselves and one magical inheritor. This movement was a campaign against MACUSA and what were considered endangering practices that allowed such destruction to be wrought.
It was also utilized by the CASI and leaders in the proto-AMUSS as ways to further this alternative schooling and discredit MACUSA, the only entity that had authority to lay waste to the progress being made in this school system. The CASI started pushing a new slogan, “A Squib in Every Class,” which was generally viewed as a confusing sentiment.
This fighting between the CASI and MACUSA led to actual discussion of the benefits of including these magical inheritors. Rowdes’ book, Magic in my Bones, gave one of the more poignant arguments that arose:
The Squib is a pathetic creature. It is weak, small, and inefficient. It is the thing you mock other children for being, or secretly fear you are.
Labeling an entire subset of witches and wizards as squibs is demeaning, disgusting, and downright dehumanizing. A “squib” has just as much latent magical properties as any other witch or wizard - take Huxley’s Bane, a simple relaxation potion that requires the breath of a witch or wizard to coalesce properly. I have given my breath to no short of 4 dozen separate droughts of Huxley’s Bane, simply to prove that I could.
But we shun them. We ignore them. We speak in hushed whispers and submit our children to brutal tactics to appease ourselves, to force the magic out.
I am not a “squib.” I am not weak, pathetic, fallen short, or something to be ashamed of. I am a magical inheritor, like my brother, like my father and my mother. Unlike me, they can utilize this magic, but like them, I can pass it on. I can appreciate it. I can learn about it and reside in the magical world. Because I have just as much right’s the the magical world as my brother and shunning me will not change that.
This movement changed how the inheritors were viewed - however accidental that was at first - and it became clear just how many inheritors in fact already attended the regional schools.
From a practical point of view, this was inevitable. The regional schools accepted any child of magical lineage and any child that showed magical abilities. Because children could attend as early as age 4, it wasn’t discovered for nearly 6-7 years if a child couldn’t utilize their magic. While there were some who were kicked out of school for this, and some who left on their own, a majority of the students remained, sidelined to theoretical studies through to graduation. Because of Rowdes work with the AMUSS, magical inheritors now are permitted access to all theoretical studies, latent ability practical studies (such as astronomy, arithromancy, etc), and a special class, often entitled wandless potions, was formed that concentrates on potions that can be made without direct spell work.
Over the years, the term has been changed to suit the community (squib was never a chosen term and is typically considered a rather low brow term). For a short time in the 1950s, the term “magin” gained popularity, but by the ‘60s someone had noticed how “magic” and “in” (the prefix of “inheritors”) nearly spelled magician. For the last 50 years, that has been the preferred term in America.
In fact, some of the countries best “No-Maj” magicians have in fact been magical inheritors. David Kotkin (known in the No-Maj world as David Copperfield) was supposed to attend Drumstrang but never got invited - it was “quite obvious” that he had no magical abilities as a child. But Hyman Kotkin, his father, believed in the No-Maj American dream and he sent David to a regional school (he graduated a proud Albany Crup).
Ironically, this inclusion of magical inheritors led to the founding of the Magician’s Institute, a private school that could, like the name suggests, only be attended by magicians. Unlike Hogwards and Ilvermorny, however, this school was a university and was one of the few places where one could be certified in performing for No-Majs. It was, after all, showing off magic to the No-Maj population. To this day, the United States is the only country in the world to not only to certify the exposure of No-Majs to magic but to allow that exclusively for magicians.
