On lying and cheating

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 165310

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:


> This very much reminds me of my many Big Letter/little
> letter arguments in the past. 

<snip>

> Well, in this
> case, and I'm sure much to your surprise, I agreee there
> is 'cheating' then again their is /Cheating/, the two not
> necessarily being the same. 

Geoff:
Having followed this thread at a discreet distance for some 
time, I thought I would just drop in a couple of thoughts 
from the real world.

When I was in the Upper Sixth at school and taking my GCE 
A-level in Chemistry, there was a practical test involved. To 
this exam, we were recommended to bring our practical 
notebooks from the year as it was too difficult to  try to 
commit all the various procedures to memory, particualrly 
in qualitative analysis. These books contained our own written 
notes and many of us had added sentences because we 
had discussed them with fellow students and examples of 
'best practice' which some of us had worked out individually 
were passed among ourselves.

Yeras later, when I was teaching A-level Maths, questions 
often included the phrase "hence or otherwise.." In other 
words, use the results you have already obtained to complete 
the next bit of the question or produce your own method. 
Lateral thinking was encouraged; as a teacher, if possible I 
would discuss more than one way of tackling a problem with 
a class.The idea was to (a) produce a correct answer and (b) 
seek to do it by the best means possible.

Harry has used the book to produce good results. As has been 
observed, he has had the ability to translate the information in 
the book into the correct end-product and that has involved his 
own skill. You can give me a detailed recipe book and I will still 
make a pig's ear of the resulting meal... as can Neville. 

When I was a Head of Computer Education, I used to attend 
inter-school training days at intervals and the most useful parts 
of these were often the time spent at the lunch table when we 
would discuss problems and methods among ourselves and 
would often come back with ideas and methods to use. I have 
often modified programs beyond where the original author had 
reached and have known folk do the same for my ideas. We had 
no objection to our ideas being incorporated into other teacher's 
work; in fact, it was considered quite a compliment.

In the above context, Harry was probably working within the 
constraints which I had known. However, I suppose we have to 
take on board the fact that he was also trying a little 
one-upmanship against Hermione so maybe a small letter 
"cheating" is called for and not a capital letter example. But does 
he feel that he might be infringing the "Prince's" copyright or is 
he, in his own view, merely 'asking' a friend for help?