Wooden Desk

The Top 10 Controversial Essay Topics For High School

If you want the ten most controversial topics for your next paper, consider the following:

  1. Abortion and whether it is right or wrong, and whether Roe v. Wade should be reinforced or overturned.
  2. Genetic cloning and whether it is morally or legally right or wrong.
  3. Capital punishment and whether it is morally or legally right or wrong.
  4. Animal testing and whether it is morally or legally right or wrong.
  5. What can be done to stop human trafficking.
  6. Whether ethnic adoption has negative or positive developmental impacts on children.
  7. Plastic surgery and whether it is morally or legally right or wrong.
  8. The pharmaceutical industry and whether it is morally or legally right or wrong.
  9. Whether or not a person has a right to choose when they die.
  10. Immigration.

Picking essay topics is particularly challenging for many students and it often holds them back from starting their essay. The key to selecting a proper topic for your paper is as follows:

  1. The first step understands your assignment details. Far too many students have failed to review their semi details thoroughly enough to truly comprehend what task is at hand. As a result they select a topic that they believe fits vaguely into their assignment requirements and yet having failed to review the assignment requirements thoroughly, they have failed to pick a topic that meets the actual assignment.
  2. The second step is to make sure that the topic you select is narrow enough or broad enough to be covered in the number of pages that you have. Almost every first topic a student selects will be too broad and will need to be narrowed down. This is normal. And you can easily narrow down or refine your topic so that it fits within the page requirements by reviewing just one aspect, one character, or one cause, or by limiting yourself with a chronological limitation or by only reviewing your topic as it presents itself in one or two chapters of your book. These are all great tools for narrowing down your topic. If you want to go the opposite way and broaden your topic because it is too narrow to fill your page requirements, you can just do the opposite and add an element, a character, a cause, or expand the time frame.