Sample introductions from question-driven essays

Sample 1:

        We have all heard sad stories of unwanted teenage pregnancies. There are the girls who drop out of school to care for babies they did not really want, having to work to support their unexpected new "families." There are the guys who marry before they are ready, to wives they would not otherwise have married—so often these marriages end in divorce. Most tragic of all, though, are the children who grow up knowing that they were not wanted in the first place, knowing that they were more a burden to their parents than a joy even before they were born. Clearly, we as a society need to get a grip on this problem of unwanted teenage pregnancy, and the obvious solution is to encourage teens to be responsible and practice birth control. But we face so many choices in deciding which type of birth control to use. Condoms? IUDs? Diaphragms? DepoProvera injections? "The Pill"? Abortion? Abstinence? Which method of birth control is best?

Sample 2:

       The moral entrepreneurs are at it again, pounding the entertainment industry for advertising its Grand Guignolesque confections to children. If exposure to this mock violence contributes to the development of violent behavior, then our political leadership is justified in its indignation at what the Federal Trade Commission has reported about the marketing of violent fare to children. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman have been especially quick to fasten on the FTC report as they make an issue of violent offerings to children. But is there really a link between entertainment and violent behavior?*

Sample 3:

       Month by month last year, the old South Carolina license tags were replaced with new ones, the ones with the pleasant blue mountains framing the numbers and the state tree, the palmetto, and offering the friendly advertisement for the state, "Smiling Faces.  Beautiful Places."  In recent months, South Carolina has also been getting advertisement of a different sort from the media attention surrounding the Confederate battle flag that has been flying prominently above the state capitol since 1962.  All the major networks converged on Columbia for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday to air the protests of groups urging the state government to remove the "Southern Cross" from its position of honor on the capitol flagpole.  These protests revealed to the nation that increasingly hostile battle lines have been drawn over the question of whether or not South Carolina should display this emblem of the 1860s Confederate uprising on government property.  Many feel strongly that the flag is a symbol of ignorance and racial hatred that should not receive official sanction by being displayed above the home of South Carolina's legislature.  Others feel, with equal passion, that the Confederate flag is a positive reminder of the rich cultural and historical heritage on which South Carolina rightly prides itself, and that as such it deserves its place above the capitol building in Columbia.  This debate over whether or not the Confederate flag belongs on the state's most visible flagpole is perhaps the most compelling issue facing the South Carolina legislature in 2000.  Should the Confederate battle flag in fact be removed from the South Carolina state capitol?

*From "Hollow Claims about Fantasy Violence," by Richard Rhodes, The Little, Brown Reader, Twelfth Edition.