Nora had had ants die before.

Dying was one of the things ants did.

This time felt different, though.

These were the ants she had tried to show to her unappreciative classmates. These were the ants that had led to an important scientific discovery that might have even proved that ants could think.

Nora didn’t just love ants in general.

She loved these ants in particular.

But they were definitely dead, all but two of them.

Nora hadn’t known that the deaths of creatures so small could leave so big a hole in her heart.

During the morning huddle on Friday, Coach Joe asked who wanted to share their persuasive speeches. Brody’s hand was first to shoot in the air, as usual. But this time, to Nora’s great surprise, Mason raised his hand, too. Nora decided to volunteer as well. After all, what was the point of a persuasive speech if you didn’t use it to try to persuade somebody?

“Great!” Coach Joe said. “Brody, you’re up at bat first.”

“I changed mine,” Brody explained before he started reading. “I was going to write about the colonists and how they shouldn’t have a war, but just try to work things out instead. And I did write about that. But then I added something else. About a different war. A war right here in our own class.”

Brody’s eyes swept the huddle, as if to make sure that everyone was ready to be persuaded of something very important.

“Okay, Brody,” Coach Joe said. “Let’s hear it.”

Don’t Have Any Wars

By Brody Baxter

War is a very bad idea. It is always better not to have a war if possible. Whenever there is a war, one side wins and one side loses. But really both sides lose.

The American colonists were mad at the British because their taxes were too high. They were mad because they had to pay taxes on stamps. Then they got even madder because they had to pay taxes on tea. If there was one thing people loved long ago, it was drinking tea. Plus, they were mad because they didn’t get to vote on any of these taxes. They thought it wasn’t fair to have taxation without representation.

So they started a war. The war did make America free from the British. But thousands of people died on both sides. The soldiers were miserable during the cold winters. They had to walk in the snow with no shoes. The war cost a lot of money, too.

If King George the Third had just let the colonies be their own country, it would have saved lots of lives and lots of money, and the ending would have been just the same. If the colonists had tried to get along better with the British, sooner or later the British would have gotten tired of having colonies anyway. Nobody has colonies anymore today.

So they shouldn’t have had a war.

In our own class, we’ve been having a war of cat people against dog people. The war is hurting a lot of people’s feelings. There is no need to have a war in our class. Dog people can love dogs best, but they can still like cats, too. Cat people can love cats best, but they can still like dogs, too. And if they don’t, they can just keep quiet and not say mean things about other people’s pets.

If the British and Americans hadn’t had a war, they could have all been happy.

If cat lovers and dog lovers in our class stop their war, we can all be happy, too.

Brody looked up from his paper with a huge grin.

“Thanks, Brody,” Coach Joe said. “I think a lot of us needed to hear that. So, team, is anybody persuaded?”

The huddle burst into applause.

Nora saw Dunk, blushing brick red, whisper something to Emma.

Emma giggled and whispered something back.

Dunk whispered something else.

Emma giggled again.

“Oh, Dunk!” Nora heard her say.

Apparently, Brody’s speech had brought about at least one truce in the dog-cat war.

“Mason,” Coach Joe said then. “What do you have for us? What do you want to persuade us of?”

Mason began reading:

A Persuasive Speech Against Persuasive Speeches

By Mason Dixon

In our class at school, we are learning how to write persuasive speeches. We are learning how to persuade other people to think and act the way we want them to. I think that before we learn how to persuade people, we should ask ourselves if that is a good thing to do. I say no.

The first reason we shouldn’t try to persuade people is that people have a right to think the way they want to think and to do the things they want to do. As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else. Why should everybody think the same way? It’s good that people think lots of different things.

The second reason we shouldn’t try to persuade people is that it doesn’t work. People just decide to keep believing the first thing they believed, only harder. When someone tries too hard to sell something to you, you get suspicious. It makes you want not to buy that thing even more.

The third reason we shouldn’t try to persuade people is that it is irritating. In fact, it is very irritating. If someone doesn’t like to do new things, and other people, like that person’s parents, keep telling him to try new things, that person is going to get irritated and want the other people to stop. If that person only likes brown socks, and macaroni and cheese, and Fig Newtons, that person isn’t going to like being told over and over again to wear other-color socks and eat other foods.

So, in conclusion, people shouldn’t try to persuade other people. The end.

“Good one!” Coach Joe said once Mason stopped reading. “I never thought of things that way. Team, what do you think?”

Lots of kids clapped this time, too.

“Yup,” Coach Joe said. “I think Mason hit that one right out of the ballpark.”

A boy named James read an anti-homework persuasive speech. Nora liked that it quoted statistics, which claimed that there was no relationship between how much homework students did at night and how well they scored on standardized tests. She adored statistics. Then a girl named Hazel read a persuasive speech about some celebrity who wore too much makeup and how she would look better with less makeup. That one was dopey, in Nora’s opinion. People either liked makeup or didn’t, the same way some people liked dogs and some people liked cats. Amy read her speech, which turned out to be about how people in the U.S. should keep pet cats indoors so that they wouldn’t keep killing over 2 billion songbirds each year. Nora remembered that, fortunately, Precious Cupcake was already an indoor cat.

“Nora?” Coach Joe called on her.

She picked up her paper and started to read.

The Importance of Studying Science

By Nora Alpers

Many people I know think science is a boring subject. In fact, some of these people are girls in my class at school. Even when girls think science is interesting, they can feel like they’re not supposed to, because the other girls they know talk more about boys, clothes, or cats, instead of about batteries, planets, and ants.

This pattern continues when girls grow up. More than half the people in America are female, but less than a quarter of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and tech workers are women. Only one-fifth of physics PhDs are given to women. Only fourteen percent of physics professors are women. In a whole century, only fifteen women got a Nobel Prize in science.

These are very sad facts, because it is so important that everybody, including girls, knows about science. We need to know about science so that we can protect our planet. Species are going extinct at a faster rate than any other time in human history, because of things that humans do. People do things that cause climate change and loss of habitat. If people knew more about science, they would know not to do these things. More important, if people knew more about science, they wouldn’t want to do these things. The more you learn about science, the more interesting and important you think everything in the world is. Even little tiny things that most people don’t care about, like ants.

So it is important for everybody to learn about science, but especially for girls, because they are getting left out right now. My family is full of women scientists. My mother is a scientist who is an expert on the rings of Saturn. My sister is a scientist who studies rock formations. I want to be a scientist, too, and learn as much as I can about ants.

Even if you don’t want to be a scientist, I hope you learn as much as you can about science. Science may not be “cute,” but it is interesting, beautiful, and important for our world. The more we all learn about science, the more we can save our world.

Nora took a deep breath when she was done. What would her classmates think? She knew Amy would like it. But would the rest of them be persuaded?

They were all clapping loudly. But they had applauded every speech so far, even the dumb one about celebrity makeup. She doubted that she had actually persuaded anybody, not the way that Brody had. But then, as Coach Joe was closing the huddle by saying something about seeing if the local newspaper might want to publish any of their speeches, Emma leaned over to her.

“I’m sorry, Nora,” Emma said. “I shouldn’t have screamed that day when your ants came to school. I was definitely being unscientific. I hope you bring your ants to school again sometime soon. I really do.”

Even though Nora knew Emma meant well, this request, following upon the rejection of her ant article and the collapse of her entire ant colony, was too much for her to bear.

“I can’t,” Nora snapped. “They’re dead.”

“Dead?” Emma asked, as if she couldn’t have heard correctly.

“Yes,” Nora said brightly. “All of them.” The last two had died yesterday. “But thanks for asking.”

Before Emma could make any reply, Nora marched off to her desk, took out her math book, and made herself very busy converting fractions to decimals.