Persuasive essay topics for teenagers - any ideas? Anyone? Anyone?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hi, Dopers. I haven’t been around for awhile, but I know where to come to with the hard questions.

I work for a textbook company in the grades 6 - 12 English department. We often need to write example essays, showing how a good one works. We also often need to suggest “prompts” (that is, topics or starters or essay questions) for teachers.

Over and over again, we hear teachers begging for “high interest” essay topics. It seems they can’t get students to write at all if the subject is too dull. They have to be able to relate the topic to their lives directly.

However, because state Departments of Education and elected school boards are involved, certain topics are effectively off limits: sex; drugs, alcohol, or tobacco; violence; acting out, rebelling against authority, or family conflict; dangerous sports, especially conducted without adult chaperone and/or appropriate safety equipment; partisan politics; non-inclusive religion; naughty words; famous people with legal trouble; insufficiently nutritious foods, such as cake and pizza; or mention of any existing commercial establishment by name, except specifically in excercises on capitalization of proper names of commercial establishments.

Sadly, topics can’t presuppose much experience or knowledge. “Military Service Should/Should Not Be Required for All Americans at 18” bombed simply because most kids know so little about what the military does besides shoot guns, or what American rights are beyond a vague “It’s a free country!!” sort of thing.

Another factor: It takes a while to make textbooks, and they hang around in classrooms for a few years after they’re printed. We have to avoid anything that might be painfully outdated in the next decade. This rules out much technology, e.g. “Cellular Phones: A Passing Fad?” It’s also iffy to focus on elderly celebrities, e.g. “Sidney Poitier Still Has What It Takes.” In fact, living celebrities in general are problematic, e.g. “Michael Jackson is a Great Role Model”.

So what’s left that actual teenagers are actually interested in, persuasive-essay wise? I don’t have any teenagers handy to ask, so I thought I’d ask y’all.

Examples of popular ones
City Hall Should/Should Not Build a Skate Park
Random Locker Searches Are/Aren’t OK
Allow/Ban Gum in School

Examples of unpopular ones
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act: Raised or Lowered?
US Schools Should/Should Not Be More Like Japan’s

What would YOU like to have been made to write persuasive essays about, back in the day?

2

Wow, your ‘elected school boards’ just about nixes anything a student would ever want to write about. I recall writing an essay pro- pot legalization back in the day. How about “no cellphones at school-- pro/con”? Seems to have gotten a lot of play here lately. A legal driving age question? Video games educational/ good for motor development, or wasted time?

3

How about “School dress code/uniforms: Yes or no”

StG

4

We did do that one, and it’s reasonably popular. Let’s see, what else is like uniforms?.. um, “Calculators in Math Class”? “Carry ID at All Times, Pro and Con”?

5

We have a “Proposed Cell Ban in Private Businesses” one that’s fairly popular – maybe I’ll try the school variation.

One problem here is the likelihood of the technology changing in unforeseen ways. For instance, I’d love to do “iPods Banned During Class” – but who knows what the music delivery system of choice will be in five years? Though cell phones might be more stable… hmmn.

We have a “Must Have Diploma to Get a License” one, but it seems to bore them. Not sure why.

One of our newest ones out is “Video Games Make You Violent,” and is doing pretty well.

6

I kind of enjoyed the one I had to write about whether there should be a minimum wage, and whether it should be different for teenagers. But I might be weird.

7

Ooh, that’s a good one. Get those teens riled up with unequal treatment! We have a “Curfew for Teens” one that does reasonably well.

8

Should the school day begin later than it does now?
Should girls be allowed to join the jv/v football/baseball team (assuming these aren’t considered dangerous sports)?
Is it right for parents to do random searches of their kid’s room?
Is it okay for malls and movie theaters to ban people under 18 if they aren’t accompanied by an adult?

9

Hmmm. Here are a couple of ideas:

Mandatory physical education: yes or no

Should only healthy, nutritious food be sold in schools (there’s at least one CA school district doing this): yes or no

Should there be a Prom King and Queen: yes or no

Animal testing for cosmetics/fabrics: pro or con

Which school program deserves more funding, and why?

Should the legal driving age be raised, lowered or stay the same? Why?

10

Well if you like that, how about “Driving restrictions for teens”? (e.g., can’t drive with other teenagers in the car, can’t drive during certain hours, can’t use cell phones even with headsets, etc.)
And my state has hour limitations for teenagers working during the school year - are those a good idea?
Should a community service project be a requirement for graduation from high school?

11

Another one currently under discussion for public schools in some areas – should the school district adopt a model of year-long schooling with several weeks-long breaks, instead of the 9-month model with one long summer break?

12

I’m going to be the lone radical, I think. I think high school kids should learn to write persuasive essays by writing about things they don’t care about.

:eek:

No, really. It’s far to hard to learn about the mechanics of good writing if all you really want to say is AGREE WITH ME, PLEASE!!! When one side of an issue is so obviously “right” (because, pretty much, kids have already decided which is the right and wrong before they start researching or writing; there’s very little grey or mind-changing in high school), it’s hard to write a good paper that addresses the other side in a meaningful way.

If you’re learning to write, learn to write. The assignment isn’t to persuade your teacher, it’s to learn to write a persuasive paper. If you can focus on that instead of an issue important to you, you can learn to write better. Additionally, if your teacher disagrees with your stance, it almost always gets a lower grade, even if it’s technically proficient. Make it a neutral or even silly topic, and there’s no bias in grading or in writing.

My favorite persuasive topics, from papers I actually did, back in the dark ages when we could choose our topics:

Brownies make a better snack food than cookies.
Red is better than blue.
Pens are inferior to pencils.
Persuasive papers are more difficult to write than descriptive papers.

13

Good one!

Unfortunately this one is ruled out under the must-pass-school-board test. California actually has a law on the books that textbooks must not promote unhealthful foods. Since persuasive essays advocate one of at least two possible positions, this topic would “promote” (or at least posit) the idea that schools *should *serve junk food.

This is INSPIRED. Genius!

Sadly, most kids will not know enough about what is entailed in animal testing, or why anyone wants to do it in the first place, to make any cogent argument for or against it.

That’s pretty good – it avoids the traps we got into with “Your school board has said it must cut the budget and is considering eliminating elective classes” – which was a flop because kids have no idea how budgets or school boards work.

May be able to do something with this.

14

Yep, these are cool. I’ll wring at least one good prompt out of this, I think.

Or whether teenagers should be allowed to work at all, maybe. Yeah.

We have a very unpopular prompt just like this. the problem seems to be that kids who don’t agree can’t articulate why.

15

Glad you liked some of my ideas! Hope you get some good arguments out of 'em. :slight_smile:

16

I fully, totally, completely, but ultimately only personally, agree with you. The depressing reality is that textbooks are made by for-profit companies. We can’t buck consumer trends if we want to stay in business and avoid shareholder uprisings. But that’s another rant!

I agree here too, which is why I would love to think of something kids have well-informed but truly competitive positions on.

My personal sense of the absurd loves all these ideas. If I were a classroom teacher, I’d assign this kind of thing all the time. Humor, however, is generally unworkable in textbooks… somewhere out there, there is some activist, humorless, pro-blue parent just waiting for a chance to complain to her local school board.

17

Not bad, though unfortunately not very “high interest”. We have a “reaction to non-fiction” one about a teen sleep study suggesting a later start among other things, and almost no one uses it.

We do have a “Sports Should/Should Not Be Co-ed” one that unfortunately elicits limited argument: kids are either in a righteous huff – “everyone knows girls are as good as boys”, or they go on lamely about how girls don’t like to tackle. But I think your idea is a better angle – put the school’s league status at stake!

Parents go nuclear when you ask their kids to criticize parenting choices. Dorks.

I like this one a lot. Do malls and theaters do this very often, do you know? If so, this might be a fantastic middle-school topic.

18

Internet message boards: Useful resource/Unreliable trash

19

Should school boards censor our textbooks? y/n

For heaven’s sake, they don’t allow anything, do they???

20

The theater I worked at over the past summer had a policy of no children under six at all and all children under 16 had to be accompanied by an adult.

This was at the Kansas City Cinemark Palace on the Plaza, if you need a cite.