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

[ridicully]

But from what we can see in the books we're not talking about the kind of work that actually requires lots of referencing at all. And while I'm certainly no expert in the Scottish school system, I doubt the teachers expect All descriptions of the properties of ingredients taken from 'Ten thousand magical herbs and fungi'. Stirring technique described in 'Potions for dummies' at the end of all homework. For research projects in the upper years maybe, but not the day to day homework.
I might be completely wrong, but I think the teachers would just assume that the students used the available reference material for their homework. Of course I went to school in a completely different country, but I was never required to cite my reference material for basic homework. At uni it's of course different, but that's because 'homework' means something else there.

Not correcting Slughorn's conviction that he's a potions genius like his mother is certainly dishonest (if, like threeoranges said, understandable), but not actually cheating.
(I've passed more than one exam by just being lucky when drawing the questions. But I certainly didn't correct the teachers' impressions that I knew what I was talking about *g*)

[grrliz.livejournal.com]

Well I guess that's what it comes down to: where one draws the line between Harry simply using something to his advantage to project an image of compentence and where he is outright cheating to maintain that deception in the face of his teacher, and obviously everyone's going to draw that line in a different place.

[ridicully]

Yeah, it probably comes down to that.

And that, of course, depends on how much we believe Harry capable of actually *thinking* ;)

But that's a different debate.

[conuly]

I'll ditto your comment on dishonesty here