On the 5 paragraph essay

What a mess...

Plaid coats ripped to shreds, old denim jeans torn and sundered, corncob pipes splintered and shattered. The horizon is thick with old cloth hats and cotton undershirts, full of holes and unfit for man or scarecrow.

And the straw, my God, the straw...it's knee-deep in places, the air filled with allergens and grass seed.

This is the gruesome consequence of strawman after strawman after strawman being constructed, propped up, and destroyed by both those in favor of, and against, the Five Paragraph Theme (FPT).

What exactly are the two sides of the issue, here? No one, I hope, is saying that the five paragraph theme is completely without merit, that it "must be thrown away entirely" (as Novick states in her letter to English Journal). Instead, the rhetoric seems to focus on how formulaic writing stiffles creative minds. In his critique of the Schaeffer method (essentially a FPT on steriods, with eight-sentence paragraphs and two (no more, no less) comments for every citation), Wiley states "Nevertheless, writing formulas are attractive, precisely because they render the "messy" more manageable. But at what cost?"

At what cost?

A good question. What are we losing, by teaching our students? Surely, Math and Science teachers must ask that question all the time: "If only we hadn't of taught them Euclidian geometry, they might have discovered Non-Euclidian on their own!"

It's the same for Music and Art teachers as well, I'm sure: "Why are we bothering teaching fugues? How droll and repeptitive!"

This idea that we are harming our students by teaching is part of many of the arguments presented agains the FPT and it boggles my mind a little. Why is the student complaint "how can I write a seven page paper in five paragraphs?" alarming, and not, as in my view, funny? Is the student incapable of writing a seven-page paper? Probably not, although she might think she is. Will the teacher have to correct that misconception? Sure, but that's the teacher's job. Will it be hard work? Well, yes. But why are you assigning a seven page paper, when your students have only done FPTs? Where's the 3-5 page paper first, or just the free form essay? Or was it "someone else's" job to develop those skills in your students?

The truth is, "At what cost?" is the wrong question, unless we're no longer concerned about the benefits of teaching the FPT. And the benefits are clear: it helps non-writers become writers. It helps students learn how to organize and construct an argument effectively without relying on the student's intuitive sense of rhetoric, which is not inherent, but needs to develop. In Nunnelly's article, he demonstrated how the FPT helped raise the standardized scores of students in his state. He also showed that other schools caught up, and that the FPT isn't the be-all, end-all of student writing. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be taught.

Student literacy, especially in urban schools, is not a rosy picture right now. Students need a guide to help them along their way, and the FPT is a very effective guide. Do students need to learn to write without it? Definitely. But they need to learn to write with it (or with something like it) first. Nunnally compares the FPT to training wheels. This is apt. And it's a definition that both sides should be able to agree with.