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National Honor Society is overrated
TUES.| 11-01-22 | OPINION
National Honor Society (NHS) is an organization in many schools across the country rooted in the principles of honor, community and leadership. It offers the opportunity to learn and develop many new skills. It is also one of the most promoted member based organizations at Rose.
However, I think this club is super overrated. If I had a nickel for every time I was asked or recommended to join NHS I would be on a yacht in Panama sipping premium almond milk with Snoop Dogg. I’d have enough money to make Elon Musk look like MC Hammer.
The organization has four pillars that they follow and stand by. Scholarship, service, leadership and character. There are many different subcategories that correlate with each subject. These include English Honor Society for English, Mu Alpha Theta for math, National Technical Honors Society for computer science,
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Science National Honor Society for science, Spanish Honors Society for Spanish and Rho Kappa for social studies. They also have Quill and Scroll for journalism, National Honors Society, Thespian for theater and more.
One of the most common requirements of these organizations is tutoring students struggling with a specific subject your section of the organization is focused on. Community outreach and fundraisers are also a big part of all honors societies. They also do popular service projects such as trunk or treat and project elf.
Some good things about being a member of NHS are the ability to help out your community, meet new people and learn to be a leader.
Many benefits behind NHS are leading conferences and that it looks good on your college application. Service projects and state summits are some of the benefits listed as a whole, however, many honors societies only occasionally participate in events. For example, the Spanish Honors Society only goes to a local Spanish restaurant once a month and orders their food in Spanish.
I believe that the work put in compared to the benefits you get from being a member is slim. From a moral standpoint, participating in these events does sound like a nice thing to do. It’s great to help your community and it is always a good experience to make new friends. However, when you participate in an event where you have to put in long, hard work with no benefits, it feels like the hard work goes to waste. They say something like “It’s all about the experience,” or “this looks good on your college resume” as a reason to join any honors society. However, this is a bad attempt at trying to give students a reason to join.
The National Honor Society is a great way to add to your pre-existing skills and is a nice experience to have. However, with the amount of encouragement to join and promotion throughout our school, it makes joining the organization very underwhelming. It doesn’t allow other important and active clubs such as Future Business Leaders of America to get as much publicity as it needs compared to NHS.
