In Defense of the 5-Paragraph Essay

Intellectually, we humans know that we share the world with other people. But our physical experience, locked as we are in our own heads and bodies, is that we each are the center of the universe, around which all other people revolve. Perhaps Zen masters transcend this restriction, but most of us can't. Our special people are close, as Mercury is to the sun; other folks, like an asshole swerving into our lane without a turn signal, are as distant as Pluto. Frustrations arrive when our satellites don't circle us in the predictable manner we expect, whether it is a lover who forgets an anniversary or the asshole who neglects to check his blind spot.

I regularly visit Rate Your Students. At this site, posts often vent frustration because someone's satellites have jumped orbit instead of dutifully revolving as the writer/center of the universe believes they should. The irritation is natural, as is the venting. God knows, I've done enough of the same here at my own blog.

But I want to share this observation: The people who survive as teachers, the people who become really good in the classroom, know that not all students share the same interests as the teacher. Most students, in fact, do not want to acquire expertise in the area the teacher loves; they are merely fulfilling a graduation requirement. The sooner a young professor learns that everyone in class will not adore the material or skill as she does, that the lack of enthusiasm isn't personal, the easier life will be. Mr. Miyagi, of Karate Kid fame, is a great teacher because Daniel wants to learn martial arts. We wouldn't be very impressed with Mr. Miyagi's teaching skills, though, if Elle Woods of Legally Blonde were under his tutelage.

Students aren't engaged in a lot of their academic work because their gifts lie elsewhere, either in disciplines different from the ones we teach or in other areas of life. Someone whose gift is, for example, nurturing children or animals might enjoy her psychology class but not mathematics. Her developmental psychology professor might be really impressed; her statistics professor, not so much. As a composition teacher, I know that most of my students don't want to write in an academic fashion. They're more interested in updating their MySpace pages than producing essays. That's not a fault; I would rather write a blog post here than solve calculus problems or dissect fetal pigs, activities that some of my poorer writers would prefer to producing their next essay for me.

Armed with this knowledge, I have to inspire my students to write essays that I can tolerate reading—because that is the nature of our relationship, they write and I evaluate. So I teach as a starting point—and for some of them, the only pattern they will master—the 5-paragraph essay. In a college composition class. And without apologies.

No predictable form is without the potential for art. No one would slam Bashō because his haiku provided only 17 anticipated syllables; I wouldn't tell Shakespeare that his sonnets were worthless because they were the expected 14 lines and had a predictable rhyme scheme. And I wouldn't say to a student, "five-paragraph essays have no place outside of a seventh-grade English class," because the rules for that pattern can produce a great essay. As every creative writing teacher can confirm, lots of student-composed, 17-syllable haiku are garbage; lots of 14-line sonnets are trash; and, of course, many composition teachers will lament that lots of 5-paragraph essays suck too, but the reason is a lack of skill on the part of the writer, not a problem with the form itself.

To be perfectly honest, I have never understood why the 5-paragraph essay gets such a bum rap. Every coherent piece of writing has a beginning, middle, and end, as does the 5-paragraph essay. In school, students write to show what they know, so giving three examples, consequences, or reasons to prove X will make any professor in biology, history, or humanities happy. If an essay question asks for five examples or two consequences, modifying the basic format of the 5-paragraph essay to seven or four paragraphs is a no-brainer. Using multiple paragraphs for each of the three restrictions in the thesis statement to turn a 2 - 3 page paper into a longer 10 - 20 page effort is also easy to demonstrate in class. The three-paragraph essay is the basis for all composition; a five-paragraph paper a more developed artifact of the thought process.

Did I write this blog post as a 5-paragraph essay? Of course not. Do I ever consciously plan a piece of writing using the 5-paragraph pattern of organization? Never! I have skills and desire to write that the novices in my classes do not. Some of my students are like budding Michelangelos or Monets; most, however, are paint-by-number and color-in-the-lines types of folk. This is the reality, and the sooner a faculty member learns this truth, the more years she'll get before burnout.

Every institution of higher learning has its star alumni. Most graduates, though, leave to become society's drones. Giving them a malleable writing formula like the 5-paragraph essay allows these folks to produce everything from letters to credit card companies, business reports for the boss, or holiday letters tucked into Christmas cards:

Seasons greetings, everyone! We had a great 2006, but these three events really stood out! First, Sparky won ...