Academic dishonesty (was "Apologies and responsibility")

[Matt]

No: HPFGUIDX 139376

--- Lupinlore:
> > As for the cheating accusation, I don't agree at all.  
> > Harry was doing what he had been instructed to do -- 
> > i.e. prepare a potion.  He used somewhat different 
> > directions than the rest of the class, it's true, 
> > however the potions he prepared were exemplery.  He 
> > never claims to have invented the directions himself, 
> > he did not gain these directions in a dishonest manner, 
> > is not forbidden to use them, and  offers to share 
> > them with his classmates.  

--- Pippin:
> Only Ron and Hermione, IIRC.  What about the others? 
> And what about Hermione's objection that the HBP's 
> spells and techniques weren't likely to be Ministry 
> approved? It's fine to experiment, but I hope that lab of 
> yours ... doesn't allow  teenagers to download anonymous 
> formulae from the internet, pass them off as their own 
> work, and prepare them for the first time in a classroom,
> potentially exposing other students to harmful or explosive 
> mixtures. And I certainly hope it doesn't lie about the 
> source of its information, as Harry did when he was 
> finally asked.

I just wanted to chime in on the academic dishonesty point.  The
borderline between honesty and dishonesty depends on institutional
expectations, which are sometimes spelled out more clearly and
sometimes less clearly.  In many RW classes, students are expected to
study and even prepare problem solutions in groups, with the results
then presented individually.  In most RW classes, students are
permitted to do research from sources other than the course materials
and use it in class.  (In HP-land, Hermione is portrayed as someone
who researches everything to death, and people seem to think that
makes her an exemplary student, not a cheater.)

We aren't told all that much about what the expectations are at
Hogwarts, but what Harry did in Potions was not all that far from
either of the RW models I mentioned above.  IMO we are supposed to
read it as sketchy but within the bounds of academic honesty.  No one
in class was creating potions from scratch -- they were all following
instructions.  It's not Harry's fault that Slughorn used an outdated
textbook whose formulas had (it appears) been significantly improved
upon by a sixth-year student.  

The only thing that makes the situation questionable is that Slughorn
obviously *thought* that Harry was improvising on the textbook
instructions himself, while he was in fact using Snape's handwritten
modifications.  But ask yourself this: If Harry had gone to the
library and found some better textbook with more modern formulas for
the potions, and then had extrapolated from those -- or simply copied
those down to use in class -- would you think that was dishonest? 
Would he have been obliged to tell Slughorn how he arrived at the
improvements, or would it be enough that he found them from sources
accessible to everyone?  

If the troubling part is that Harry was acting on "inside information"
the we need to query whether Snape's formulas were in fact secret, or
whether over the 50 years since publication of the original book those
improvements have in fact become more commonly known.  Hermione -- who
unlike us is familiar with the Hogwarts expectations regarding student
work -- seems to be more troubled by the idea that the modifications
are unreliable than that they are not publicly available.  And that
suggests to me that she herself is shortsightedly fixated on the
coursebook as final authority, and is not able or willing to exercise
an intuitive feel for the subject.

-- Matt