The entire purpose of the honor code in any school, including ours, is based on the student populations’ integrity. This means that even when one is bystanding a bad behavior, that person would need to turn it in immediately. The students may have these strong moral principles, but do they have courage? To turn in a peer or maybe even friend can be hard to do when the confidentiality or one’s reputation is at stake. Students at Lawrence Academy ‘opposed this obligation to take action against another student because they did not see it as their responsibility. They feared that a mandate to confront peers would create friction and that a subsequent report could not easily be kept confidential’ (Source B). It’s easy to assume the difficulty
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It simply gives them too much power that’s easy to abuse. According to Donald McCabe and Gary Pavela, ‘At college level, more that half of all students surveyed acknowledged at least one incident of serious cheating in the past academic year and more than two-thirds admit to one or more “questionable behaviors”’ (Source F). That shows high levels of dishonesty. A student run survey found that 48% of students believe the honor code is enforced fairly and 88% of students believe that the repercussions are reasonable when there’s a violation of the honor code (Source E). The honor system is obviously favored by the students, but why? Probably because the high levels of dishonesty can’t be turned in by the tiny 8% capable of doing so. The honor code simply doesn’t work. In a cartoon made by Aaron Bacall, there is a presenter with a sign that reads, ‘Using honor codes to prevent cheating,’ and the presenter saying, “Recent research has shown that a spycam can greatly improve the honore code” (Source A). This cartoon was made to show that teachers notice that the honor system doesn’t work and are trying to just build on it to prevent cheating. It shows the irony, though, by building on the honor code, it’s no longer an honor code. Especially when you’re using spycams. An honor code can basically only be fixed by the students and their decisions. That’s a system that just won’t
It simply gives them too much power that’s easy to abuse. According to Donald McCabe and Gary Pavela, ‘At college level, more that half of all students surveyed acknowledged at least one incident of serious cheating in the past academic year and more than two-thirds admit to one or more “questionable behaviors”’ (Source F). That shows high levels of dishonesty. A student run survey found that 48% of students believe the honor code is enforced fairly and 88% of students believe that the repercussions are reasonable when there’s a violation of the honor code (Source E). The honor system is obviously favored by the students, but why? Probably because the high levels of dishonesty can’t be turned in by the tiny 8% capable of doing so. The honor code simply doesn’t work. In a cartoon made by Aaron Bacall, there is a presenter with a sign that reads, ‘Using honor codes to prevent cheating,’ and the presenter saying, “Recent research has shown that a spycam can greatly improve the honore code” (Source A). This cartoon was made to show that teachers notice that the honor system doesn’t work and are trying to just build on it to prevent cheating. It shows the irony, though, by building on the honor code, it’s no longer an honor code. Especially when you’re using spycams. An honor code can basically only be fixed by the students and their decisions. That’s a system that just won’t