5 P Essays and Where Not to Find Them

I see all kinds of writing in my daily life. Much of it is for entertainment, and some of it is for education or persuasion (and often in educational writing, persuasion to get you to believe it!). All in all, I see many kinds of writing and pretty much none of it is – you guessed it – five paragraph essays. Nope. Not a single one. Unless I’m proofreading my own writings or a peers for a class that has decided to have us write one.

Now before I continue I’m going to be honest. I’ve written so many essays that I’m used to them. When I first started writing them they were daunting and terrifying, but now it is little more than routine, add the right ingredients and you at least have B material. I’m a high achiever aren’t I? Still, the practicality of such an assignment seems pretty much nil. I really don’t see it in everyday life and the structure of that kind of literature is not often repeated. Sure, we like to see examples and quotes backed up by evidence in scientific texts, but it certainly is not that same, dull, format.

Most kinds of writing I see are written in colloquial English. Free flowing and personalized. I also read a lot of scientific articles and they too, unless in a scientific journal, are less structured and more about content instead of style. A matter of fact I would stand by anyone who argues that a standard five-paragraph essay in all its sandwiched glory is little more than pointless filler with no true purpose other than to demonstrate that one can write a five-paragraph essay and meet the guidelines -not very creative.

On the subject of essays though, I will admit I’m not much of a fan of them in the first place. They also seemed so forced and lifeless (though the best ones I’ve read broke up the traditional structure in a marvelous way) as though the only real thought put into them was properly embedding and cite quotes.

All of this reminds me quite a lot of Russell’s activity theory. He essentially states that writing cannot just be writing and students can’t be just taught to just write in general. Just like his ball-handling speech. They must be taught to write a specific way to use writing to achieve a certain goal. We are all mostly taught that to write “well” we need to be able to whip up a great 5 paragraph essay and to be able to do so made us skilled writers. The emphasis on those essays in elementary through high school can be, potentially damaging I believe because it excludes so many more genres and styles of writing. Not to mention they are completely dreadful (to me anyways) to write even if they are an easier way out after at least 9 years of practice writing them.