It’s the first chapel of the year and my mind is already filled with stress. Seeing people getting their awards, the pressure to be recognized as well is already setting in. While Honors Day traditionally recognizes academic achievement as a core value of the school, it simultaneously generates feelings of anxiety amongst students. I believe this creates a complicated dynamic where the same event celebrating excellence can also foster pressure and shift the focus from learning to recognition-seeking. Despite this concern, I still think that celebrating achievement is important, we just need to find a more inclusive approach that doesn’t diminish the worth of the learning journey itself.
Honors Day celebrates various forms of achievement through academic awards, service awards, book awards and special awards that highlight a student’s character.
The fundamental purpose of Honors Day stems from ‘Iolani’s culture of academic excellence. Mrs. Melanie Pfingsten, Associate Head of School and Upper School Dean, said “‘Iolani has always been a place where academics comes first. When families choose us, or when students choose us, they know that they’re coming to a place where academics will always come first and where academic achievement is honored…Academic achievement should be spotlighted, because that’s something that we hold highly for students.”
Personally, seeing everyone get awards during Honors Day at the start of the year was definitely a motivation for me to maintain my good grades throughout the year. This motivational effect seems to be common amongst other students as well, like Tyren A. ’27, who mentioned how “it motivated me,” but also said “there was a lot of pressure on myself to perform better in school.”
From an administrative perspective, Mrs. Pfingsten said that Honors Day is important for those who excel at academics: “I think there’s probably a range of reactions in the student body. If you are somebody who is going to get these honors, it’s your moment. And then I imagine there’s a body of students who feel like they fell short and now they’re sitting in the audience watching other students be celebrated.” I agree that recognizing academic achievement is important. Not only is it important for personal fulfillment, but it could also be useful for things like college applications. Bryan B. ’25 said, “The colleges need some physical material, or at least some sort of tangible awards in order to make their, you know, holistic reviews, so they have to definitely use these academic awards to judge a person.”
Despite these benefits, there are notable downsides to consider. Although Honors Day was a motivation for me, it eventually led me to feel stressed about that one B at the end of the quarter, instead of feeling proud of all the other As I had. According to Elise Waghorn’s article in “The Conversation,” awards can lead to students being motivated by extrinsic (outside) factors, rather than intrinsic (internal) factors, leading to students working hard only for the sake of the award, rather than to actually learn the information. This phenomenon plays out in the real experiences of students at our school.
Miley C. ’25 said, “Me putting more effort into math and science classes is more of a ‘I’m gonna do good so I can get recognized in Honors Day’ perhaps, instead of actually trying to retain the information.” She also added that “[Honors Day] is a stress factor. I tried so hard, but I still know that that’s not going to be me.” This mirrors Waghorn’s idea in her article that awards lead to students being motivated by outside factors, and not actually enjoying the learning journey. When she didn’t receive an award, she said, “I was very embarrassed, especially if it was for an award that I felt like I put a lot of effort towards. Even though I did put in a lot of effort as best as I could, it made me feel bad that it’s like my effort went unrecognized.” This happened for an art elective she took, where she thought she was going to receive the award but someone younger than her ended up getting it.
The focus on award-winning rather than learning is not unique to Miley’s experience. Tyren A. ’27, who got Top Scholar in his freshman year and is now a sophomore, also relates to this: “Last year, I would say it caused a lot of stress from trying to make sure I had all my grades. This year, not so much, because I got a bunch of bad grades in the first quarter, and I kind of gave up.” His motivation disappeared after he realized the award was unattainable.
When considering potential changes to this tradition, Mrs. Pfingsten acknowledged the complexity of this issue. She described Honors Day as a ritual, and a “ritual is about telling the community what’s important to our community. So changing the ritual altogether takes a lot of discernment and contemplation.” Despite this traditional importance, she stated, “I don’t think we’ve ruled out the idea of shifting Honors Day to a different format.” Mrs. Pfingsten said that the school continuously seeks ways to alleviate student stress, but questioned whether Honors Day itself is truly the root of this problem: “Is it a 30 minute assembly, or is it how their parents talk to them about achievement [and] whether or not they’ve had opportunities to to develop strengths outside of academics?”
Several alternatives have been proposed by students who feel the current system could be improved. Miley suggested that these awards could be given privately instead: “The award shouldn’t be about the opportunity to show to the rest of your classmates how you excelled in this particular course, but to know it yourself and to know I put the effort in and I’m getting awarded for that.” This private recognition approach presents an interesting alternative, though when asked about this alternative, Mrs. Pfingsten said “It’s a really sticky problem, because there are a lot of feelings. And the student who said they don’t mind getting it in the mail might have parents who say, ‘no, they should be walking up onto a stage because they worked hard.”
Bryan suggests we expand the pool of academic awards, for example, recognizing multiple top students for the academic awards for upper school, because “sometimes there is more than one qualified student who deserves the honor. If both, or even more, students bear similar grades at the end of the year, it’s unfair to the others to bestow merely one student to the award.” Another suggestion from him is that we “introduce some other types of awards so that more people can get recognized, not only stellar learners, but also people who just improved the most.” However, there are concerns about expanding recognition as well. Bryan noted that while the addition of more awards recognizes the achievements of more students, “it also undermines the value of the award itself.”
This idea of recognizing improvement and effort resonates with many students. Miley suggested, “awarding students who passed difficult classes in general, like they had the courage to take a difficult class and pass it successfully.” Similarly, Tyren said, “It is important to recognize the people who have put in all this hard work and gotten to where they are.”
Overall, Honors Day has mostly benefited my academic experience, but was definitely a stress factor. Looking at the bigger picture, I don’t think we should completely abolish Honors Day. Academic achievement deserves recognition. But we need to broaden our definition of what’s worth celebrating. Honoring students who tackled challenging courses and passed them successfully, or those who showed the most improvement, would be valuable additions. By expanding our recognition criteria, we could create a more inclusive celebration that values not just the destination but the path taken to get there.
