[HPforGrownups] Re: Academic dishonesty

[Sherry Gomes]

No: HPFGUIDX 139410

Del replies:
What is being taught is the ability to successfully make a potion
*according to a certain protocol*. Simply having the students make
potions would be a waste of time and resources. Though the potions are
what is used to grade the students, they are not what really matters.
What matters is how good of a potion can the students make while
following a particular method. It's the *skill* the students develop
and demonstrate that matters, their ability to produce a certain
result under certain circumstances - including the method they are
given. So using another method makes the whole exercise worthless. 




Sherry now:

I disagree.  In fact, I was quite shocked to find that people here
considered Harry's use of the handwritten notes in his text book to be
cheating.  To me, the results were what mattered.

Long ago, in order to get some rehab services, I had to undergo an
evaluation of my daily living skills as a blind person.  I went to a four
week program, where i had to be tested on my mobility, cooking, cleaning and
various other daily tasks.  It was a joke; I was in my mid 20's and had
learned all these things in childhood.  I'd lived on my own since 18 and
taken care of my own self.  Anyway, this one teacher, who was evaluating my
cooking skills discovered that I like to make bread.  I'm an excellent cook,
and I rarely take a recipe and follow it exactly.  instead, I usually add a
pinch of this or that to make it better.  This teacher got very upset with
me, because i don't do things in some prescribed manner of how blind people
are supposed to do things.  I never did understand it.  My stepmother taught
me how to cook and I've never poisoned anyone.  He told my rehab counselor
that i didn't cook properly because i didn't measure things in the
prescribed manner.  Possibly he was referring to the fact that I didn't
measure anything when I made bread, or that I don't take my measuring cups
and pour things over a sink or bowl in case I spill.  Being blind doesn't
make me automatically spill things, but there are some pretty strange things
written out there by sighted people about how blind people ought to do
things.  So, the rehab counselor asked the teacher, did the things Sherry
prepared come out properly?  Yes, he said.  Well, then, she  replied, it
doesn't matter how she did it.  The results are what matters.

So, that's how I took the scenes with Harry doing the potions in HBP. i was
more disturbed by the hold the book seemed to gain on him and truly
horrified when he used that spell on Draco.  The potions didn't bother me at
all.  He got the correct results.  There's no way that Snape's method of
teaching, waving a wand and directions being written on a board teaches the
students anything more about the intricacies of potion making than Harry
following the HBP book did.  Hermione was just suffering from sour grapes
for being beaten, for once in her life, and by someone she considers
intellectually inferior to herself.

Just my opinion.

sherry