Uneasy Rhetoric

There is a great bit in One Pot Meal about the five paragraph essay, that rigid structure that it is the bane of so many high school English students.

Both the One Pot Meal piece and another he references make good points about the five paragraph essay form.

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The five paragraph essay is an essential starting point for learning composition. Students learn to outline their ideas, be brief in their explanations, and choose only those supporting ideas that are best suited to making the point.

At least, this is how it ought to be. In reality, students immediately reject the rigidity of the structure, possibly because it confines their prose in much the same way they’ve been confined to a classroom and the inevitable homework to follow. Many teachers reject the structure as well.

As a senior in college I tutored writing to my freshman peers. At this college there is no “freshman writing” class; students are simply thrown in and expected to swim.

Many of them, it appeared, had never learned to write the five paragarph essay (or were already rejecting ‘form’ as too confining). I could say it was because they came from “alternative” schools, but I had a public school education and don’t recall being hard-sold the idea of a five paragraph essay. They never had that structural foundation on which to build. Their writing was circular, repetative, or formless. I don’t know how many times I took what the student thought was an almost completed paper and brought it all the way back to the outline stage. It’s a wonder I never made anyone cry.

Do I think there should be rigorous five-paragraph instruction? No. Do I think early writing instruction should place much more emphasis on form? Absolutely. Musicians, atheletes, soldiers, all know the utility of drills; of repeting the same task over and over until you get it right. The same is true of writers or artists. Doing “drills” like the five paragraph essay helps to build the strenth of the writing.

But, one may ask, what about creativity? Sometimes writing to a structure can serve to enhance creativity. Some of the greatest poetry ever written was written to the very rigid sonnet form –not that I think the five paragraph essay will ever rise to that level (though a creative student could write a five paragraph prose-poem — why not?). If the purpose of the writing is to work through arguments for and/or against an idea or defend a position, the five paragraph essay, or at least the outline of such an essay is an excellent place to start.