Honor Code System Analysis

When implemented correctly, an honor code is the best method for ensuring an honest and nurturing school environment. When implemented correctly, an honor code helps responsible and successful students prosper. Because high school marks the transitional period to college, it is essential for a school to establish an effective honor code system that will foster a morality that will last throughout an individual student’s career. Specifically, GSMST should maintain but revise its honor code. Currently, its honor system involves a simple signing of an honor banner for each class. Of course, students are told the consequences of cheating and plagiarism, but the most important concept of an honor code system is never established. GSMST has a very

“The success of [an] honor code depends on the expectations that students have of their peers’ behavior” (Dirmeyer and Cartwright, 2013); as a result, if peers are the ones who establish and maintain an honor system, the probability of a responsible student community is much higher. Nevertheless, “with a peer-enforced honor code, the likelihood of being caught depends on other students’ tolerance for cheating” (Dirmeyer and Cartwright, 2013). To ensure that the students have a strong moral basis, the school’s administrative board should still guide the students toward the right direction and provide a strong enforcement of whatever form of honor system is composed by the selective student body. A typical issue discussed by many student bodies is “to [function] based on our consciences, but [also in a manner that] represents skeptical and uncertain views of fellow students” (Vangelli, 2013). Therefore, a strong and supportive administration at GSMST would also benefit the students in this way as

In 2013, Aaron Bacall proposed a joke stating “recent research has shown that a spycam can greatly improve the honor code.” An honor code is based on integrity and honesty, and a “spycam” only reflects a bad connotation. School-wide academic honesty should be achieved in an honest and acceptable manner. Unfortunately, cheating still occurs occasionally even “where honor is so well defined and policed by an elite student committee” (Kahn, 2013). Consequently, some level of technology should be used to evaluate assigned homework. GSMST, being very technology oriented, has already established a method for detecting plagiarism in essays. Although this technology is beneficial, it is also applied in an honest manner. Students are aware that their work is being evaluated; it does not cross morality lines like a “spycam”