National Honor Society - History

History

In 1921, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) officially established the National Honor Society. Under the leadership of Dr. Edward Rynearson, principal of Fifth Avenue High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the organization grew from the original Alpha Chapter at the Fifth Avenue School to more than 1,000 chapters by 1930.

Based on the NHS constitution, four purposes are said to guide NHS chapters. They are:

  1. to create enthusiasm for scholarship
  2. to stimulate a desire to render service
  3. to promote leadership
  4. to develop character in the students of secondary schools

These purposes are supposed to translate into the criteria used for membership selection in each local chapter.

NHS is sponsored and supervised by NASSP, which appoints a National Council, the controlling body of NHS. In addition, National Council members serve as the selection committee for the NHS Scholarship, which has been administered annually in schools with NHS chapters since 1921.

In 1929, NASSP founded the National Junior Honor Society (NJHS), a sister organization to NHS, to recognize students at the middle school level.

Read more about this topic:  National Honor Society

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

    American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.
    Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)