Analyzing Reicher's Honor System

Recently, a friend of mine saw another person cheating on a test that a majority of the students in the class struggled to pass. She was upset with this person, but she did not confront the student or bring them to justice by telling a teacher. Instead, the friend has only complained about it to her friends and me, and we too have decided not to say anything. At Reicher Catholic High School, no strict honor system or code exists. Only a list of unfrequently used consequences for cheating and plagiarizing is currently instituted. A lack of concern for the cheating problem dwells within the school’s halls, in both cheaters and people who are mere witnesses to the dishonorable act. Reicher Catholic High School should adopt and build up a student-driven honor system so that students who cheat and plagiarize will be less likely to do so because they would rather not face their peers. The value of my education at Reicher is cheapened by others’ academic dishonesty. While an honor system does exist, it is not effective. Expert Donald L. McCabe says that honor codes that are enforced by the students themselves are …show more content…
The honor system is only successful if a tradition of truthful students is continuous at a school (C). However, if a school is filled with some dishonest students who cheat, the following students coming into the school will be more likely to be cheaters just like their predecessors. The cheating to honest student ratio seems to be a somewhat uneven at Reicher, with there being more academic dishonesty than honesty in the classrooms. Students who expect a loosely upheld honor code may ignore it. That creates a large number of students ignoring the code, henceforth making it ineffective in the long run (C). If the students at Reicher enforced and maintained their own honor code, the ratio of honest to dishonest students would curve the other