Persuasive Essay 10

Prompt: If an alumnus donated a large sum of money to your school, how do you think that money should be spent? Write an essay convincing school officials to allocate the money in the way you think is best for the school.

Generosity is occurring less and less in our self-interested day and age. People tend to keep the money they have worked hard for for themselves. Therefore, it is nothing short of a miracle that an alumnus has donated a large amount of money back to our school. However, the question now is what to do with the money. The donated money should be invested in the students’ education and be used to purchase necessary materials and support extracurricular activities.

            It is no secret that students need the adequate materials in the classroom in order to learn. The most important material that we need are textbooks for our classes. Many teachers are forced to teach material from their own minds or using their own teacher’s edition book; this oftentimes does not help the students learn. Teachers are forced to make their own Power Points and slide shows so that the students take notes and then expect them to study them at home. This, as we know, does not always happen and notes can easily be misplaced or copied incorrectly. If we had textbooks, however, notes would be supplements and the students can be assigned pages to read at home; this will reinforce their learning of the material and allow them to understand and receive higher grades in the class. A textbook shortage is rampant in our school due to budget cuts, however with the donated money, officials can make a decision to make learning easier for students.

            Extracurricular activities such as field trips, music programs, and sports teams are vital in every child’s education; unfortunately our school is lacking in this area. We do not have any sports teams, take little field trips, and we have a nonexistent music and art program save for a theatre arts college class. Studies have shown that music programs and sports teams actually boost students’ performance in the classroom because they learn various skills such as critical thinking and time management skills. Field trips provide students with an opportunity to go out and see the world and experience things they otherwise might not be able to experience. This experience transcends into the classroom and gives students the chance to apply those real life experiences to the material being taught in the classroom. Yet, our school does not have the funds to administer these programs that benefit the students. We need to fix this problem and the generous alumnus has given us the resources and opportunity; we just need to act upon it.  

            School officials may argue that there are many other places where the money is needed more urgently; for example, the buildings might need remodeling or teachers may want new televisions or computers for their instruction. It is true that the school is in need of many improvements and it can be hard to decide where to spend the money. However, we all need to think of the students first and what they need now, not what could help them hypothetically or in the long run. We need our textbooks so that we can better understand the material being taught and alleviate the unnecessary suffering cold teaching causes teachers. We need more extracurricular activities so that we can learn beyond the classroom and textbook and discover real-life experiences. The combination of textbooks and extracurricular make for well-rounded students set for success in higher education institutions.

            We should be thankful for the alumnus’ generosity for donating his money to our school. He obviously would want his money to be put to good use, so we should respect his wishes. The students need the necessary learning materials; we need our textbooks. We also need extracurricular activities to discover hiddent talents and hobbies that we may enjoy and combine the academics of the school with real-life experiences to have a better understanding of this world and ourselves. We have a rare opportunity to better our school, our students, and our teachers. Let us be intelligent about the situation and use the money