The goal of this paper is not to fix all the issues in teaching argument writing. In general, the public agrees that our school systems, and particular the teaching of writing, is often ineffective. However, “literary statistics, however, tell us that the public’s expectations are unrealistic” (Dornan, R. W., Rosen, L. M., & Wilson, M. J., 2003). The reality is that education is a much more complicated system than to be able to fix with one paper or one idea: “given the complicated and diverse network of teachers, textbooks, students and administrative concerns, American schools as a whole are powerfully resistant to change. Some teachers and school systems might experiment with reading and writing pedagogies, but few reforms will be adopted wholesale because one size does not fit all” (Dornan et al., 2003). Unlike a more monetary-based field such as engineering or business, education is based on people. Every student needs something different in order to succeed, and even the best teaching method in the world is not going to work for everyone. While the government has tried, “one educational reform in literacy cannot possibly be appropriate for every school district because the various regions of the country have their own economic and cultural needs and their needs are complex” (Dornan et al., 2003).
What the Goal Is
The goal of this paper is to simply provide teachers with some resources that they can add to their library to continue to help more and more increasingly ethnically, culturally and learning stylistically diverse students, in the hopes that over time, each teacher will develop what works for them and for their students to create the most student interest and success possible.