Dear Superintendent,
Recently, educators have been debating extending high school to five years. Some people agree and disagree with this argument, perhaps because I am still in high school I disagree.
Next year I will be a senior and knowing that's my last year of high school is magnigicent. One of the reasons I think high school should last four years is because most students already lose interest after their Junior year. I also think students would drop out after their senior year of high school, surely not all the students would drop out but I believe a nice hand full would. Because students are eighteen or close to that age when they're seniors, I could see how dropping out would be a sign of protest. Also, it doesn't seem legitimate why students would stay in high school an additional year when they could simply drop out and enroll for college courses.
I suppose the reason I'm taking this position is because I'm not quite sure what huge benefit this fifth year would have on students.
Hmmm... A letter arguing against more education is unlikely to be successful if it is filled with grammatical errors. Here are just a couple:
Some people agree and disagree with this argument, perhaps because I am still in high school I disagree.
This is a comma splice. You need to either break it into two sentences, replacing the comma with a period, or use a semi-colon in place of the comma.
Next year I will be a senior and knowing that's my last year of high school is magnigicent.
This is a run-on sentence. Also, "magnificent" is misspelled.
My guess is that one of the "huge benefits" of an extra year of schooling might be better writing. What do you think?
Issues of grammar aside, your essay is utterly unconvincing, and I say that as someone who agrees with your position. In fact, after reading your essay, and Simone's response, I actually find myself doubting my original opinion. When you can't even convince people who agree with you, you're in trouble.
You need to come up with better reasons for your opinion. Unfortunately, you've picked the side that is more difficult to defend. The idea of extending high school is good in theory, but flawed in practice. They used to have an extra year of high school in the province where I currently live, but I've yet to find anyone who went through the system who came out of it better prepared for university that me and my friends, who were raised in a system without that extra year. High school, indeed, school from K-12, is a mess, especially if one is dealing with public schools. They have much in common with prisons (by design, as it turns out, rather than by accident), are forced to teach to the lowest common denominator, and have been ravaged by experiments in "progressive" education. Understanding and explaining this, though, is somewhat more difficult than simply singing the praises of giving kids additional education.
