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

[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.

[ridicully]

I woulnd't say what Harry did was the noble thing either, I think it gave him an unfair advantage over the rest of the class because he didn't even have to work for the improved notes.
But I don't think most teachers would see it as cheating. Certainly not the right thing to do and they would prefer he did the work on his own, but nothing they actually could do something about.

[agnes-bean.livejournal.com]

Really? I think teachers at my school, if they found out, would have a long discussion with him, take the book away, and probably make him re-do most of the work.

[ridicully]

But with what kind of reasoning?
"He used some kind of not actually published information?"
We never get to see the Hogwarts School Rules (of to know if such a thing even exists) but if Harry and Ron can use Hermione's notes when writing their homework and preparing for the exams (without anybody ever accusing them of cheating, which Hermione would certainly have done), surely Harry could use some other student's notes as well?

Kind of, the teachers at uni certainly don't *like* that some lectures have only five listeners during the whole year, but as long as the other 145 students actually pass their exams, there's not much they can do about it.

[ryf.livejournal.com]

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.

Like all the other stdents, too. They don't really learn something in Potions class if they don't want to. Everyone there just brews a potion from the instructions of a book. They don't have to learn anything, they don't have to memorise. They just have to weigh, count and stir.

Also, giving an answer you found the easy way is also a way of learning. Not a good way, but many people can remember answers they wrote down or gave in class better than when they just read them in a book they had to read.

[conuly]

I'll agree with you here.

If I thought that potions classes were like chem classes, and you were expected to understand why it works, I'd agree with the statement that using the better recipes isn't learning.

But as near as I can tell, it's just memorising recipes. I don't think much of this form of education, but Harry is just doing what everybody else is doing - except better, because he has a better cookbook.

[pilly2009.livejournal.com]

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.

Imo, he did both. One of Hermione's pet peeves in HBP was that Harry seemed to carry the book everywhere, whether or not they were actually in class. In the library before Madam Pince arrived, he was taking notes from the book -- this qualifies as learning, same as taking notes from a chemistry text would. Furthermore, we know for a fact that he learned the spells of the HBP from the book. We know for a fact that, even if he used the "bezoar" trick in class, the lesson actually stuck, so this, too, qualifies as "learning".