(12-05-2019, 11:17 AM)classicdrogn Wrote: At no point in the books is there any suggestion that Snape does anything but put a recipe on the board, stalk around spooking the non-Slytherin students while they try to follow it, and set essays between classes. Anything they learn of potions is from the books, on their own time, in spite of him, as far as I can see. Fics that try to make him better usually take it too far the other way, as the mountains of horrible Alan-Rickman-husbando-squee trash will attest.
I find it's generally a bad idea to go by what's shown 'on screen' in most school based books/shows. For instance, if you watch the anime Food Wars class appears to consist entirely of the teacher setting a test, then expelling a random number of students. And, like Hogwarts, it's never even implied that they teach things like math and science and all the other things you'd expect a school to teach.
The reason being of course that no one wants to read about a completely ordinary class when the characters could be doing something exciting like fighting trolls or baking pants exploding bread.