"What Is an Honors Student?" (Forum on "What Is Honors?")

It is first necessary to recognize the distinction between the questions "What is an honors student?" or better "What are the characteristics of an honors student?" and "How do you recognize a student with those characteristics?" The first of these two questions is easier to approach since it is more a matter of prescription than of description, a presentation of an ideal rather than a recognition of an actual state. We can all list characteristics which we would like or expect those special students to have who are worthy in our estimation of the designation "honors." These expectations, I submit, are often informed by our own experiences as honors students ourselves or in association with others, when we were in college, who were considered to be honors students by official or by general agreement. It is quite another matter, however, to be able to detect, directly or indirectly, the presence of those qualities which constitute the character of an honors student; they may or may not be readily evident and, it seems, very often are not so. In my admittedly anecdotal experience, so-called objective criteria for judging the quality of students fail quite miserably when it comes to predicting success in honors curricula. The Scholastic Aptitude Test fails to account for that imagination, creativity, and curiosity which I believe are integral to the personality of a true honors student; and high school grade point averages are often more indicative of the quality of the school and/or the teaching-to-the-test instruction which seems to characterize so much education at that level than they are of the quality of the student. As for Advanced Placement work, there are times when I feel that the number of Advanced Placement courses a student has taken is inversely related to that individual's potential for success in honors education. I say that for a particular reason. I would posit breadth of interest and commitment to ongoing learning in a wide variety of areas as major indicators of a good honors student. More often than not, I have found that students have taken Advanced Placement work to avoid broadening their experience in college and to facilitate narrowing their college curriculum to those areas in which they feel academically secure or which they feel will advance their professional or vocational agendas for college.