Highly agree with this - I am baffled why the humanities aren't taught this way in US high schools. Writing always seemed difficult to me then, but upon taking

Highly agree with this - I am baffled why the humanities aren't taught this way in US high schools. Writing always seemed difficult to me then, but upon taking my first college class which had lots of essay writing, it dawned on me that making a persuasive argument was the most important part of an essay. This has much in common with the critical thinking touted in the hard sciences & mathematics. If English was taught this way in K-12 education, instead of enforcing arbitrary rules such as page length & word count, I would have done immensely better. I got the important takeaway from that experience, but many people do not, and it is a shame.