Apropos of nothing - a random HP thought.

[ridicully]

Where does half the fandom get the impression that Harry is cheating by using a book with notes in it?

They are allowed to use their book while brewing and are supposed to have read up on the potion they are preparing in class.
And in written tests, I doubt they are allowed to use their books anyway, so the notes won't be any help to him there.
The only difference I see between Harry and a Ravenclaw (in this instance) is that the Ravenclaw would have made the notes himself - and probably not in the book, but on a spare bit of paper.

Having better reference material is rarely considered cheating. No matter how much of an advantage it gives you.

Comments

[ryf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am wondering this, too. However, I don't think it's fair that he doesn't help his friends with his book. He seems to want the knowledge for himself and only he gets the really good marks.

Streber :)

[conuly]

That's not true. He offered to let them read it, but Ron couldn't read Snape's handwriting, and Hermione refused to flat-out.

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

But he says that Ron can't read the handwriting as well as he can, and the only reason he doesn't pass it onto him is because he can't be whispering instructions to Ron all class long. They probably could have worked out some pre-class notes for Ron that might not have been quite as good but still helpful, though I suspect that never occurred to either Harry or Ron. Hermione flat-out refuses to use the book, though that absolutely floors me, because as someone who's a bit of a know-it-all herself I can't imagine not being very interested in seeing refined instructions to things I want to master. Of course, Hermione's a very by-the-book sort which kind of separates her from Harry in less drastic ways throughout the series, too.

It didn't feel like cheating at all to me, obviously; I suspect Slughorn might have even found it cunning, had he realized what Harry was up to.

[incitata.livejournal.com]

Definately not cheating but then the HP fandom has some very strange ideas.

[ridicully]

the HP fandom has some very strange ideas.

Definitely no disagreement from this side *g*

[schnurble.livejournal.com]

This bugged me too.
When I studied, we were allowed to use our notes in some of the exams, and no one considered it cheating when one used a copy of the notes of someone else, because their own notes were not usable (or simply not existent).

Only thing I would admonish is that Harry didn't share the notes with Ron (I wouldn't have shared with know-it-all Hermione, but Ron is his best friend and can use some extra help)

[conuly]

He tried to. Ron couldn't read the notes. Hermione refused ot.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

They're probably getting this idea from Hermione, stickler that she is.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

I have no idea where they get that idea. It bothered me all through the book that Hermione kept accusing him of cheating!

(Of course Rowling called it that through Hermione Sue and if she said the sky was purple and green and anti-freeze was soda pop, there'd be a lot of dead people in this fandom the next day.)

[everythingisaid.livejournal.com]

Haha, and word.

[accioslash.livejournal.com]

I may not think that Harry is cheating by using the HBP's book, but *Harry* obviously thinks so. Why else would he tear off the cover of the new potions book he ordered and replace the insides with Snape's old book?

[effseedee]

Because after he gets his new book he has to return the old one - he even notes as he's doing that if he gets found out they can't complain, because he's giving them a new book.

here from the Snitch

[clare-dragonfly.livejournal.com]

I can't see how it can possibly be cheating. Okay, Harry isn't an American college student, but American college students buy used books--often with highlights and notes in the margins--all the time. Nobody thinks it's cheating when we use them, whether for classwork or for papers.

It also drives me crazy that Madam Pince freaks out like that when she sees the book and all the writing in it. Writing in books is GOOD. Grrr.

Re: here from the Snitch

[nights-mistress.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's a library book, I can understand the irritation!

[rhoswen-rosier.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's cheating at all and I don't see why Hermione's so offended and upset by it. If he used it like during a test when they were supposed to be doing things from memory or something, that's a little different, but there's no reason for him not to use the extra notes.

[bluemeanies4.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's cheating but I can see why Hermione disapproves of it and calls it cheating. She does all this hard work and then Harry just breazes through.

I would kind of compare it to how a student who actually read the novel and studied feels about the kid who aced it using Cliff Notes. In fact, the way Harry seems to have not improved when the book is removed makes the Cliff Notes comparison more accurate in a scary way.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Yes, except that all the students are doing the potions straight from a set of instructions. Harry's just using a different set. Also, the Prince doesn't include any theory behind the modifications, although they don't seem to study actual theory much, in general. I would agree that Harry was doing the Cliff Notes version if the other students had to come up with their own recipes or examine all the theory and then figure out how to improve the recipes. No one is really doing the "full" set of work except for Snape, originally, and in a different way Hermione, who seems to do extensive work whether or not it's actually necessary.

[juju-bean.livejournal.com]

It's cheating. Harry is benefitting off of someone else's work. He put no thought or effort into his potions, preferring to take the easy way out. They're graded on each potion they make, so it's just like using someone else's notes during a test.

[littlemousling]

Have to agree. It's not quite like reading the Sparknotes instead of the book, but it's very close. There's a reason he had to keep the profs from finding out about it.

[agnes-bean.livejournal.com]

Harry was using someone else’s work to get a good reputation/good grades in the class. Is this technically cheating? I don’t know, it might depend how the potions were used in terms of grading. But it sure does violate any honor code I’ve ever see.

And I don’t think it’s quite the same thing as a student going out and doing extra research about a potion. For one thing, it seems to me that the Prince’s advice was ingenious, not something anyone could find with a little bit of research. After all, Snape IS supposed to be an extrodinary potions maker. And for another thing, people who go out and research did just that…research. They still had to work to find any extra information. Again, maybe Harry wasn’t cheating, but I do think he was being unethical.

Also, while conuly is right, and education is about learning, I think it would be wrong to say that Harry used the extra notes to actually learn anything. He used them to get the potion right. It's like, last year in math, to prep us for the AP test, our teacher gave us graded problem sets to do, where we had to show all of our work. He also gave us detailed answers, which were allowed to refer to if we got stuck, as long as we mentioned that in our answer set. The point was that the answers he gave us would be a tool we could use to learn. What Harry did was the equivalent of just coping out the answers and handing them in, instead of trying to work the problem out on his own, and only referring to the answers when he got stuck. I mean, without that book, I doubt Harry could duplicate his results.

[agnes-bean.livejournal.com]

Note: That’s not to say I think he’s a terrible person for doing what he did. Heck, I probably would have done the same thing. I just feel like it’s not the “noble” thing, and most teachers would probably consider it cheating.

[asphodel-ale.livejournal.com]

Actually, it is cheating, not because there are notes in the book, but because he is using what is essentially a stolen book--the agreement was that he was to use that book only until his own came in. Turning in a new book in place of the old isn't sufficient: it'd be like swapping covers on a Gutenberg Bible with a modern one--the value of the insides isn't equal. (Religious value aside, of course.)

Had he asked permission to keep the old one and been granted it, everything would have been perfectly acceptable, morally speaking.

(Note: A higher moral standard would have been to get that permission, then use it to do the equivalent of the DA, only with potions.)

[ridicully]

But is using a stolen book actually cheating?
Isn't it mereley wrong because of the stealing? *g*

I wouldn't consider it cheating

[jazzypom.livejournal.com]

if it's an open book exam.

Really.

[jassanja.livejournal.com]

Back in my school days they had readers that were notes written by the teacher. Down thing was that you had to buy them from them.
If you used them you were clearly off better.
So no cheating!

[moira-can-bite.livejournal.com]

I think that it could be considered cheating because he takes credit for the potions. Slughorn is impressed because he assumes Harry is using the same instructions as everyone else but still doing better than everyone else, when actually anyone else in possession of the book (assuming he or she could read young Snape's handwriting) would be doing just as well. To me it appears that the only reason he doesn't give credit is because he's scared of it being thought of as cheating causing the book (and the compliments) to be taken away from him. He seems to consider it enough of an unfair advantage to want to keep it a secret.

[maelwaedd.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand is why the text books are so wrong that Hermione can't get the potion right. I mean, cheating aside, if Hermione-Sue couldn't have done something, and Harry could, I think Snape should have written the text book.

[grrliz.livejournal.com]

The textbooks aren't so wrong that Hermione couldn't get it right, it's that in comparison to Harry's her Potions do not look nearly as good. In the first lesson, their Potions should be a light lilac colour by the end and only Harry's achieves this; Hermione's ends up purple and not nearly as pale as Harry's, but she still gets an "approving nod" from Slughorn as he passes, so clearly she's doing something right. As someone mentioned above, Potions is a lot like cooking, and there's more to being a brilliant chef than being able to follow a recipe (as Snape demonstrates by his various adendums to the instructions).

[avenginglyyours.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on. He's cheating.
He didn't write the notes - he didn't work on the amelioration of the formulas in the book, and yet, he takes credit for it.
I mean, if you were, say, in german class, and there were questions in your german textbook with the answers written underneath, wouldn't you be cheating if you answered the teacher with those answers ?

I understand why Hermione's angry at Harry - she works almost 24/7 to be the best, but all he has to do to is open his textbook and voilà ! (even though he clearly doesn't understand half of what Slughorn says during class (cf. chapter where they have to make the antidotes)). He manages to make perfect potions with the HBP's textbook, but not without it.

Which makes me wonder, aren't the official formulas written in textbooks also chosen to help distinguish between good and bad students ? I mean, if all the students had the HBP versions of the formulas they'd obviously all achieve EE on their exams, which would pretty much make them useless. So maybe the official textbooks have purposely difficult versions of the potions, so as to make it easier for the teachers to see which students truly understand potions and which don't.
(... wow, that was long)

[ridicully]

But if I had to take a chemistry practical and friends of mine had already taken it and would give me their notes saying things like "The book says to heat it for fifteen minutes but if you just add a bit of peroxide it will be finished in 10 minutes." I probably wouldn't learn very much from the practical, but I still wouldn't consider it cheating.
It's not as if there were whole essays written on the margins of the book. More improvements on the potions the like of which could probably be found in more up to date potions texts.

In the chapter where actual understanding of the concepts is required, *no one* in the whole class but Hermione has any idea what to do, so I don't think the actual underlying principles are something that's often mentioned in class.
So all the advantage Harry has in most lessons is an improved recipe. Which he could have come by himself if he actually did the work.
Of course, he is lazy, but that doesn't mean he's cheating.

(And I certainly used the scribbled in answers in my English textbooks to answer the teacher's questions. As long as it wasn't during an exam, I fail to see how that's cheating.
I might regret it now, because it didn't do me much good for actually learning the language, but it's not cheating.)

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

A large part of the problem here, I think, is that Rowling is presenting us with a class that both allows open book tests and that is almost entirely fact-based, with no theory at all. I can't think of any RL academic course that does this: those I've been in which require people to memorize facts don't allow them to use textbooks on tests.


If making potions is supposed to be a test, then using the HBP book is cheating--but it makes no sense that the students are allowed to use textbooks at all. If it's supposed to be classwork/homework, it's not, any more than I was cheating by asking a friend to take notes to me or explain those notes, or than someone reading a Cliff's Notes volume is cheating at English class, or so forth.

[zerl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think you hit a nail there, Slughorn is a slug of a teacher *before* Harry is in any way a cheater.

I mean Snape gave his class a wonderful mixture of theory and fact-based study, grading them on written homeworks he asks to hand in as well as class performance, from what we've seen. I guess with such bad teachers as Slughorn, the question of whether one of his students is cheating becomes sort of moot.

[zerl.livejournal.com]

He's a cheat because he never dissuaded his teacher (Slughorn) of his misconception that Harry came up with those spectacular results without outside help.

Whether that counts as cheating in school terms I don't know, but Snape also called on it based on morality rather than regulations, I think, and personally I'm guessing that comment in Myrtle's toilet stung Harry, if only just a little.

Here from the Snitch

[is-peoples.livejournal.com]

Very good points.

I'd also like to add that a lot of the OMG!Harry'sCheating! crowd seems to be working under Snape's opinion that Harry's an idiot who couldn't find his way out of a cauldron with a Reductor Curse. The kid did get an E in Potions during the OWLS. He understands the practical aspects of potions, and the point of the classes appears to be "follow the recipe and make a potion."

It's like math -- if you have a math book that shows you a different method than the teacher's to find the solution to the questions, then it's not cheating. It's just learning how to solve the problem in a different way. Of course, it's a risk, because there's a fair number of teachers who value their method over correctly calculating the answer, and will penalize a student for not using their method.

Also, not corrrecting Slughorn's assumptions is dishonest of Harry. It's still not cheating, though.