Commentary: Denied

In my English class, we are writing commentaries.

We spent several days brainstorming ideas on topics that we, individually, could write about. We needed to pick something we were passionate about so that we would have a strong voice when we were writing, and it wouldn't be as if we were writing something to be published in a text book. When we were picking out topics, the situation in Darfur, Sudan immediately came to mind. Last year I learned about the genocide that goes on there and the brutal ways of their government (www.savedarfur.com). This is something I have a strong opinion about, and since it's an opinion paper, I thought I'd have no problem getting my topic approved.

I was denied. My teacher said it was too "broad" and I needed to be more specific. So I was. I said I wanted to write my paper about how the US government should step in to stop the genocide. She asked me what they were being killed for, and I told her as much as I remembered without having to do research. She then told me that I couldn't write a paper about Darfur because it's something I already know a lot about and she wants us to expand our knowledge.

My question is.... How can you write a good opinion paper in the few days she is giving us, without knowing anything about what you're writing? Shouldn't you have enough background knowledge to have formed an opinion BEFORE you write the paper, so that you don't appear uneducated to your "readers?"

I then went on to try my luck at a different topic. The fact that Tom Sawyer is still banned in some schools. Why? I do not agree with banning books for any reason, especially a kiddie story about a reckless boy that has a theme park in designed Disney after it. If Disney can make a movie out of it and rate it G, why can't a middle school (better yet, a high school) put it on the shelf?

I was denied. I felt like she was arguing with my opinion with hers. The point of telling her our topics was so she knew what we were writing about, not so she could fight back before we even wrote our paper. In these two topics, I was trying to bring some individuality back into the classroom, which we are strongly lacking now-a-days. Everything is based on a group now. If you're with this group you get this grade, etc. That is not grading you based on your individual talents and intelligence.

So here I am, trying to do a topic I doubt anyone has done before. Instead of over half my class, doing cliche topics like abortion, adoption, and teen pregnancy. You read stories about those in the news every day. Yes, they're important. But I bet if you took a poll, society would say they're tired of reading about them. Why not do something out of the norm?