The introduction of the so-called honor system into the educational institutions of the United States must bear a large share of responsibility for the intellectual and moral turbulence and disregard for law that mark our student bodies today. Confusion on the part of the leaders of society is sure, in its turn, to produce confusion on the part of those led. To cite a manifestation of this fact, one need only point to the questions inevitably arising in a young mind imbued in nursery and early school years with the virtues of "schoolboy honor" when confronted in later years with the requirements of the honor system as described below.

The foundations for an ordered society must be well and consistently laid if disorder and weakness are not to break forth in the superstructure. A careful and objective examination of the honor system in its variations and of its implications does not reveal the requisite strength, but shows it to be a dangerously weak foundation for orderly and ordered living in this less than perfect world. And, it may be added, if the world were perfect, no system-honor or otherwise-would be necessary. The honor system is a myth that needs to be dispelled.

What is it for?
The honor system, as discussed in this paper, is a method pursued in educational institutions which in its pure form, it is hoped, will make it possible to detect student misdemeanors and determine their authorship without the intervention of proctors or monitors. Self-reporting is the method most acceptable, although in some variations of the system students aware of the misdemeanors of fellow-students are, in the last resort, in honor bound to report them to the authorities.

Let it be noted here that the chief stress in an honor system is upon the detection of a breach of regulations and the discovery of the identity of the violator of rules, rather than upon the necessity of substantive obedience to the rules themselves and the need for providing punishment for rule violation.

It is not coincidental that in this age of disregard for law, if not of open violence, educational institutions on both school and college levels should increasingly turn to the so-called honor system for the solution of the problems of law and order among the students. To administrators and faculties, this system appears to offer a blessed relief from an increasingly frustrating task while it admirably suits the anti-law attitude of many students.

Seed of its Own Destruction
An honor system appears on the surface to be a very simple thing. Yet honor systems as they commonly exist in our schools and colleges are marked by so many inner contradictions and incongruities as almost, if not quite, to disqualify them as the systems of law and order that they purport to be.

The term "honor" itself is difficult to define. It suggests honesty, self-respect, a sense of integrity, and individual and social responsibility-all of them highly subjective qualities appertaining to an individual's personality as such, and not to be put on or off according to external circumstances and conditions.

One of the most glaring incongruities of an honor system is that its successful working depends in the main upon the, functioning of those whose honor has proved conspicuous by its absence. This clearly involves a contradiction in terms which has proved difficult for students to explain. If, furthermore, self-reporting or reporting by a fellow student fails to occur, in the absence of proctors or monitors, the enforcement of rules is rendered impossible, and the existing system of discipline is weakened accordingly. In the light, too, of the traditional and still strong emphasis upon school-boy honor, reporting by a fellow student is but a slender reed.

Still further confusion appears when the attempt is made to correct the deficiencies of student honor by appointing proctors or monitors whose duty it is to check up on the violation of rules and on the operation of the honor system in general. In this situation, students have been quick to forget the true nature of honor, its essentially subjective and personal character. Finding an objective system of detection of misdemeanors brought under the same umbrella with a sentimental system of student reporting, they not unnaturally assume that honor has somehow automatically become a dead letter. They assume that they are not only not in honor bound to report misdemeanors, but that they arc not even in honor bound to observe the rules supposedly in force.

Honor Versus Government
Thus is the system of discipline further undermined. The responsibility for maintaining an ordered society tends to be shifted to the shoulders of the officials of whatever system exists, and the honor system has destroyed itself. Although conceived as a means of securing social law and order, it contains within itself the seeds of lawlessness. The possible effect of this development upon the concept of student integrity is only too obvious and requires no elaboration here.

The charges against the honor system can be summarized in the comprehensive indictment that it does not adequately prepare students for life in the world outside. Society in that world is, unfortunately, not composed exclusively of those whose actions are at all times controlled by their sense of personal honor, nor is the assumption made, as the phrase "honor system" suggests, that honor does in fact exercise such universal control.

Man has, at all times and in all ages, found it necessary to devise an objective procedure for the detection of malfeasance and its punishment. To this procedure the term "government" has been applied. The tern "honor system" suggests only the effective functioning of individual personal honor; the term "government" looks as clearly toward those whose honor fails or is deficient and for whom other motivation for the observance of law must be provided in the interest of all members of the community.

For "honor" in this context should be substituted the much less glamorous but more realistic "sense of social responsibility" and "good citizenship," the use of which automatically obviates many of the confusions and incongruities considered here. Surely these indispensable bulwarks of civic and political stability would be more firmly implanted in the citizenry if the disciplinary systems prevailing in educational institutions reflected more clearly and generally accepted principles of government.

For the maintenance of law and order in school or college, two factors must be present. There must be a feeling, and a recognition, of social responsibility on the part of the individual student-not couched in the phraseology of "honor" and the "honor system," with their odor of sanctity, but in terns of good citizenship and all that that implies in individual and social values. There must also be an objective means of detecting breaches of the law and of dealing with such breaches.

Appeal to Students
Appeal must be made to the reason as well as to the sound sentiment of students. They must be reminded that in the political community outside the schools and colleges their integrity does not disappear with the presence of the policeman on his beat. As in all social problems, the solution of this one must be found in education. The students must learn how to apply the fundamental principles of government to a viable student organization for the maintenance of law and order. In this work departments of political science bear, I believe, a heavy responsibility.