This isn’t explicit, but it seems to suggest that Hogwarts is the only magical school in Britain.
That does beg the question of why anyone would be excited that Ginny got in, when everyone is allowed in. I would think that only squibs might be denied entry, and Ginny clearly aint no squib.
Doesn’t Hermione gush about how Hogwarts is the best wizarding school in England, when Harry first meets her aboard the Hogwarts Express?
First person to look that up and come back with an answer wins the internet!
I believe I have read a transcript of a Q&A with Rowling, in which she states that Hogwarts has about seven hundred stuents. This might to suggest a “baby bust” in the year Harry was born, as Harry’s class size is hardly commensurate with a student body that large.
Could there have been a drop in the birthrate among wizards around the time that Harry was born, because of the danger the Death Eaters posed to the community? Birthrates do tend to drop in times of uncertainty. I would think that might be even more true of wizards- I would imagine that magic could be used for very effective contraception if a witch or wizard wanted to do so.
Eleven is way too old for that. An eleven-year-old kid has almost certainly had quite a bit of experience with muggle life, and is old enough to remember it. The kids also go home for summers and holidays, and presumably experience muggle lifestyles and technology during those visits home.
Ooh! Now this is fanwankery I like! This makes perfect sense. I remember reading something by Rowling to the effect that Hogwarts had around a thousand students (though I wouldn’t want to bet that the seven hundred figure cited above wasn’t what she actually said.) This has always been an inconsistency that I found irritating - there’s only five boys in Harry’s year in Gryffindor (however it’s spelled.) I don’t remember how many girls there are, but there’s not a lot more. Assuming the houses are at least roughly equal in size, that’s hard to reconcile with a thousand students total. But it would make perfect sense if people stopped reproducing at the height of Voldemort’s power.
It’s not that I think a kid that age is liable to forget what a car is - it’s more that I think that’s about the age where you expect kids to feel the most pressure to fit in, and fitting in with wizarding culture would seem to involve not stressing one’s muggle heritage too much, and I’m imagining you’d almost certainly not want to go around saying, “Damn, I wish I had a computer. Fuck these books, I need Google and porn.” (Of course, if memory serves, the first book takes place in 1991, so it’s a bit before the net became ubiquitous anyway.) I’m more thinking the way an eleven year old would react to moving to a new country - I think it’s pretty typical for kids that age to embrace their new culture and want to abandon their old one.
None of this can possibly explain, though, why wizards seem to find muggle money so confusing, especially considering that theirs is divided into twenty-ninths and seventeenths. Even pre-decimalization British currency wasn’t that bad. That’s one of those ridiculous little touches Rowling added to the series - absolutely no way a society would be using money with those multiples, but I suppose it does make the wizarding world seem a bit more foreign and exotic. Totally unrealistic, but I accept it just like I accept that math is being taught by the improbably named Professor Vector.
Why the phonographs, quill pens and candles? No electricity I’ll buy for cd players and light bulbs, but a pencil not being used for homework? Even with the huge plot twist for The Village, some things were taken for granted.
They are willing to use a steam powered train to get the kids to school but add indoor plumbing. Either put everything in the Victorian age or not.
Because societies don’t do things because they are logical, but because they are traditional or for other reasons.
Similar, with the odd currency - for centuries, currency (not only in Britain) was non-decimal, and people coped, because switching to another method would have been a lot of bother (there was a lot of bitching and moaning when the Euro was introduced, for example.)
I think Rowling said in an interview (which I can’t find at the moment) that Hogwarts is the only magic school in England; and that people like Stan Shunpicke (the bus conductor) are educated at home and then start as apprentices for their trades.
As to how many students there are at Hogwarts - Rowling has admitted that she’s bad at math; there are two figures, one high (from spectators at Quidditch games) and one low (from Harry’s classmates), and they can’t be readily reconciled. (Similar to the Weasley’s ages - they just don’t fit). So I’m ready to ignore these inconsistencies after she’s already given up on this. 
As for the Muggle kids bringing new technology into the wizard world: we don’t know for how long Half-bloods and Muggles (like Hermione) have been allowed into Hogwarts (maybe it only started with Dumbledore’s liberal politics). Add to that that even Hermione, who comes from a thoroughly boring Muggle background, uses magic with ease, and that electrical gadgets won’t work in magical places (because of interference), I can see why a Muggle student, excited about the magic, would ignore the mundane ways of doing things. Why sew your clothes if there’s a spell? Why cook, if your wand can do it? Why vacuum, if there’s a spell? So other uses of Muggle technology might be forgotten because spells are so awesome and can do much more.
This is also explains the often-asked question “Why didn’t Harry /Dumbledore/whoever use the XYZ-spell in that and that situation?” Because there are so many spells (and Harry has learned only a handful so far) that he doesn’t always think of the obvious solution (and esp. under stress, people forget things). I like the scene in PS, when the trio has fallen onto the plant, and Hermione says she likes damp and dark, so Ron suggests making a fire. Hermione (as Muggle, like the reader) thinks about matches, and Ron reminds her that she’s a witch and can magic fire. She doesn’t think naturally of all the options because there are so many, and it’s a scary situation.
It’s not a phonograph, it’s a Victrola–I believe it had to be wound.
I like constanze’s ideas-muggles would naturally think of real world solutions, but wizards wouldn’t. This mostly works in their favor, but look at Mr Weasley-only stitches stopped his bleeding, something the healers only tried last. (why they didn’t just zip up the skin is another matter–her take on medical magic is odd, to my mind).
the population thing is not too hard to swallow. I vaguely remember one of her interviews (maybe film 3) and her saying that there are 5 boys in Harry’s year, 4 hourse=20 males (but some houses may have more members), dunno bout the girls, but say 6. That’s 24, so roughly 45 kids in Harry’s year.
Actually, I am not sure about the limiting of the boys to 5. Harry misses the Sorting for several years, and aren’t more names called out than are followed as characters in the books?
Also, another interview memory here: Rowling has said that she created the whole of Harry’s class in her head, so that she could refer to them throughout. They are written down somewhere.
I do hope she comes out with Hogwarts, A History someday. That would be a nice end cap on the whole series.
The money thing kinda bugs me too, but I tend to think of it as old British money from Jane Austen etc–the tuppences, and crowns and hapennys and guineas etc. It’s a glorious jumble (in a novel any way) and I let it be.
There are definitely only five Gryffindor boys in Harry’s year. I am quite certain of that, though I couldn’t say where it’s been stated for certain (I think the narrator might have mentioned the number of beds in their dormitory, or soemthing.) It’s quite clear that Harry, Ron, Seamus, Dean, and Neville are all the Gryffindor boys in their class. On the girls’ side, I’m not as sure - there’s Hermione, Parvati, and Lavender, but I couldn’t say for sure whether there are any others.
Your point is taken, but I’d like you to point out any society in which multiples like 29 and 17 are used - wizard currency is not just illogical, it’s simply mathematically difficult to use (much worse than pre-decimalization British currency, as I said above.) A problem almost certainly magnified by the students’ probable difficulty with math, given their lack of education in the subject.
The weird part, though, is that they seem to have either non-electronic gadgets or else magical versions of muggle technology (like the Wizarding Wireless thingamabob) but they seem to be about 50 years out of date. My question is not so much “Why don’t they all have iPods shipped to them?” as “Why haven’t they come up with their own equivalents to all the sorts of machines that make muggles’ lives so much easier?” A cranked victrola simply would suck as far as listening to music goes; if wizards can’t use CD players, why the hell haven’t they come up with anything else? The peculiar mix of outdated technology and magic seems really inexplicable to me.
I know I said I’d look up that line from GOF last night, but I fell asleep on the couch and forgot. I’ll get around to it tonight.
You know what would be a cool magic version of the CD or iPod? A Pensieve filled with memories of original performances.
And in Quidditch, why can’t a Seeker pull out his wand and perform “Accio Snitch!”?
Total WAG here, but I’m sure it’s against the rules. I would imagine it would forfeit the game.
Perhaps also the area around the quidditch pitch is enchanted to prevent it, similar to the enchantments on Hogwarts grounds that prevent apparating.
You don’t play Quidditch with a wand–or else Harry could’ve used his against a Dementor…wait–didn’t he strike(?), hit(?) do that to Malfoy at one point? So maybe they do carry their wands during Quidditch. Wonder if the professional leagues allow that!
Maybe the variants in population are correct-aren’t there more boys in Ginny’s year (and she seems to date them all…).
Now I am curious about the wand/quidditch thing. The money I just accept.
Music doesn’t seem to be a huge deal to wizards-perhaps if you can conjure up any old tune, there isn’t the desire to do so. Or maybe Rowling’s tone deaf. I don’t know!
I can see why TV isn’t present-when you can see magical critters and people can disappear in front of you-who needs special effects and instant replays?
But then again-the World Cup had large screen TV monitors AND electric lights. Hey, wait a minute!
The money thing can, potentially, make perfect sense. Remember, they’re still using specie. The values of the coins are the values of the metals which make them up. So, suppose the coins are all the same size. The number of Knuts which make one Sickle will then be equal to the ratio of the value of bronze to the value of silver. I would imagine that at some point in history, in the wizardly economy (which is coupled to but not identical with the Muggle economy), the ratio was approximately gold worth 17 times as much as silver, silver worth 23 times as much as bronze, and the Ministry of Magic just legislated the coin ratios to be fixed at exactly those amounts, to simplify multiple-coin transactions.
I think you’ve answered your own question. A new wizard (like Hermione) comes into the wizarding community from the Muggle community, and is familiar with the Muggle conveniences of her time. She decides that it would be nice if the wizarding world had similar conveniences, so sees about how to make them. But the general principles upon which the device is based must be different: Not only will some aspects of technology not work with magic, but the new wizard (who is probably only 11 years old) probably only has the vaguest notion, if at all, of how the Muggle technology worked in the first place. So it takes this new wizard some time to figure out how to do it, and then it takes time for it to hit production, and time to get any necessary infrastructure in place. So by the time a magical version of a muggle device is a routine household item, it’s 50 years out of date in the Muggle world.
Ingenous theory, but.
I don’t see why an adult wizard couldn’t routinely visit the muggle world and tinker, so to speak. They are somewhat adept at “blending in”-witness the Riddle family.
Also, most inventors are young, no? I say that, having been influenced by one too many Andy Rooney movies in my youth…
I don’t mind them being 50+ years out of date. A wizard with an ipod is just wrong on so many levels (for the world she has crafted. Another story might do well with it)
The Riddles were muggles. It was Voldy’s mother and her family who had magic.
Good point, though. I mean, a lot of wizarding things do seem to be just muggle gear altered. I can imagine a wizard or witch seeing a clock, thinking it was useful, gradually over time adapting it until ending up with something like the Weasley’s clock, then selling it on (or just the idea).
The Riddle family? 
Are you talking about Tom “Voldie” Riddle’s dad and his parents, or his mother and her brother and father? 'Cos that would be the Gaunt family, who could hardly be said to have blended in down Little Hangleton way. Tom Riddle the elder and his parents were Muggles.
uhhh, Mickey Rooney (as Andy Hardy, perhaps)?
You’re quite right about that wrongness.
That clock bugs me, btw. When first introduced, it was described as a grandfather clock. And now, Molly Weasley is carrying it around on top of her laundry basket.
Isn’t it specifically mentioned in PoA that Harry makes sure to keep his wand in his Quidditch robes in case the Dementors show up, which isn’t something he’d normally do?
Or perhaps I’ve gotten this idea from fanon.
You got it right. I remember that specifically. (And I seem to remember that Ron and Hermione surprised Neville by bringing their wands to watch a quidditch match in the first book after the match in which Harry was nearly knocked off his broom, but I may be misremembering.)