Honor Society Awareness Month – March 2025

History of Honor Society Awareness Month

The National Honor Society of Secondary Schools (N.H.S.) was established in 1921 by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (N.A.S.S.P.) to recognize and encourage outstandingly excellent academic performance at the high school level. The N.H.S. was modeled after the Phi Beta Kappa which is the undergraduate collegiate contemporary. To extend this honor to younger students at lower school levels, the National Junior Honor Society of Secondary Schools (N.J.H.S.) was established in 1929.

The National Honor Society is one of the best-recognized co-curricular activities for American high school students whose essential development over the 20th century, has now come to be acknowledged and accepted as an integral part of education in the U.S. The National Association of Secondary School Principals, (N.A.S.S.P.), re-emphasized the status of the student activities in its 1996 report titled “Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution.”

However, in the early 20th century, some of America’s leading educators expressed reasonable concern regarding the seemingly enormous amount of attention to social and athletic activities in American schools, as against scholarship. Responding to this, a group of educators embarked on the establishment of local and regional societies to recognize academic excellence.

Phi Beta Sigma was one of the first academic societies founded by scholarship-centered educators, and it was founded in 1903 at South Side Academy in Chicago, Illinois. The famous Cum Laude Society was then organized shortly after, in 1906, at Tome School in Port Deposit, Maryland. The establishment of the National Honor Society itself was a result of the determination of a group of educators to ensure that scholarly activities remained at the core of the American educational system.