Establishing the right tone

Besides clarity and good thesis statements, another important aspect of beginnings is establishing the right tone. Many essays founder not because of what they say but how they say it.

　　Student writers, in particular, often believe the best way to make an argument is to make it as strongly as possible. This is particularly common with essay assignments that invite some degree of personal reaction. But remember that the whole point of argument is to convince people who don't agree with you, and the best way to do that is to make them willing to listen to you. Especially at the beginning of an essay, you should strive to find common ground with opposing views. Even if you plan to end up with a strong argument, the beginning is a time for moderation, for a reasonable, open-minded tone that promises honest consideration of a question. A couple of examples:

ORIGINAL REVISION
The school-choice movement is a racist scheme to weaken public education. School-choice advocates don't care about minorities or fairness; they don't even really care about kids. Instead, they seek to support conservative religious groups, to wall off the rich few from the working many, and to increase the massive segregation of American society. School choice represents an attack on poor and working-class Americans, on blacks and other minorities, and on secular society.
School choice programs are intended to provide all parents, rich and poor, with the opportunity to choose the best schools for their children. Public schools, long insulated from market forces, would thus have incentives to satisfy parents or suffer declining enrollment and reduced funding. But school choice raises a number of troubling questions: is it reasonable to use tax dollars to support religious institutions? Do we as a society wish to undermine the inclusive values of universal public education? And doesn't school choice allow millions of middle-class white to"opt out" of racially mixed public schools in favor of lily-white private schools?

　　The point is not whether the original passage is utterly wrong, but that it will fail to convince anyone. Iit will simply reinforce the convictions of those who already agree, and induce those who disagree to tune out. Note that both these passages may well end up with essentially the same argument, an attack on school choice—but the revision is likely to be much more persuasive to readers, by virtue of how it frames the question at the start.