Taking up Henry Giroux’s call for an “enobling [sic], imaginative vision” and a “language of possibility” with which to generate hope and a plan for improving education in North America, this thesis presents Lev Grossman’s fantasy series – the Magicians trilogy, consisting of The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), and The Magician’s Land (2014) – as providing this ‘vision’ and ‘language’ through its representations of education. Using a close reading practice alongside the method of thematic criticism outlined by Farah Mendlesohn, key passages in the series are analysed to explicate an “imaginative vision” of an ideal, alternative education and present this vision – alongside a plan for achieving it – to educators. I argue that the series can be a pedagogical tool to serve educators in recognising the issues inherent in the current North American education system and the need for reform, in facilitating and motivating the implementation of an ideal alternative in their classrooms – an autonomous education practice based on the theories of Paulo Freire and John Holt – and in aiding with explicit instruction on the concept of agency to foster student success within the new classroom practice. Through a process of literary analysis, the Magicians series is presented to educators to help them understand and implement theories such as liberating and dominating praxis, banking education, and autonomous education. Rather than waiting for institutional-level or school-level reforms, this thesis helps educators reform their classrooms immediately, improving education outcomes for students and demonstrating the possibilities and benefits of adopting an autonomous education practice. In addition to presenting the Magicians series as a pedagogical tool to address the issues in education, this thesis also posits fantasy fiction as a valuable body of literature for seeking solutions to real world problems by demonstrating the applicability of fantastic representations of education to solving real world issues. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis presents Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy as a tool for teachers, scholars, and students to use in addressing the problems in education in North America today. Starting with Henry Giroux’s research and writings on the problems with North American education, the Magicians is presented as the “imaginative vision” Giroux says must be located in order to inspire hope and present a plan for addressing these issues and modifying education to improve the outcomes for every student. Combining the theories of educators Paulo Freire and John Holt with the practice of literary analysis, this thesis examines the Magicians and argues that a critical reading of this fantasy series can serve educators by identifying the current problems and the need for reform, by introducing a new autonomous education practice that can be used in individual classrooms, and by supporting students in this new system through teaching the concept of agency directly.

This dissertation presents a holistic framework for approaching fantastic school stories: that is, narratives which feature the protagonist’s education in magic. This three-part framework attends to the ways in which the fantastic school story subgenre draws upon the characteristics and possibilities of the school story genre, fantastic literature, and representations of education – in which a hidden curriculum is always inherently present – to create unique opportunities for representing and foregrounding issues and structures within educational institutions and the relationship between education and power. Employing this lens allows for a more nuanced and complex consideration of the impact of fantastic elements in these narratives, examining the ways in which such elements exaggerate, embody, or enforce underlying ideologies and norms and offer encouragement to readers to interrogate these aspects of the text and the mundane educational experiences they encounter. This framework is then used to analyse representative texts in the subgenre and explicate the hidden curriculum of each: ideologies of immutable gender and identity in Jane Yolen’s Wizard’s Hall; the use of testing as a gatekeeping measure to reinforce Pureblood supremacy in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series; the prerequisite of economic capital to access education, undermining the myth of post-secondary studies as social mobility, in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles; the violence of imperial educational institutions in Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy; and the vocational habitus of witchcraft, including gendered divisions and expectations of personal sacrifice, on the Discworld in Terry Pratchett’s “Tiffany Aching” quintet. This framework and these illustrative analyses, by explicating the structures underlying the protagonists’ education and the ways in which they are thereby limited, participate in the projects of developing an emancipatory approach to children’s literature and in consciousness-raising regarding hidden curricula in education. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Texts in the fantastic school story subgenre – that is, narratives about a young person learning how to use magic, often at a school – are a valuable opportunity to explore the relationship between power and education. Here, I present a three-part approach for reading these texts which looks at how these narratives combine elements of the school story genre, fantasy literature, and representations of education to create a unique format. This unique format makes it easier for readers to see underlying structures and issues in education by making familiar elements feel unfamiliar through the addition of magic. I then use this three-part approach to analyse fantastic school stories by Lev Grossman, Terry Pratchett, Patrick Rothfuss, J.K. Rowling, and Jane Yolen. Reading the texts through this lens brings forward issues related to education like gate-keeping, socioeconomic status, imperialism, and gendered norms and divisions.