The Trouble with Five-Paragraph Essays

The five-paragraph essay is a phenomenon so universal, in the American education system at least, that it really should require no introduction, but I have it on good authority that when it comes to five-paragraph essays, a solid introduction is of the essence.  So then, for the sake of form, I shall remind the reader that a five-paragraph essay is a simple form of written argument.  It begins with a paragraph that introduces the topic and contains a thesis statement which briefly sets out the author's main points, which are elaborated upon in the three following paragraphs, and then restated and wrapped up neatly in the fifth, concluding paragraph.  It's all very neat and tidy and efficient, and let me put it bluntly: I hate five-paragraph essays.  I always have.  I hated them when I was in school and expected to write them.  I hate them now that I'm grown up and, in my capacity as an unofficial teacher's assistant, grading them.  Five-paragraph essays hinder critical thinking; they stifle literary style; and, however indirectly, they encourage academic dishonesty.

The purpose of most academic writing exercises, up to and perhaps including the undergraduate university level, is to teach the student how to think.  No one expects new insights about Shakespeare's soliloquys or the fall of Rome from a grade-schooler.  Less important than the content of most student work is the thought process that goes into it: the ability to think through the subject matter, to take a position and state and support that position so that another person can understand it.  In "The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme," English teacher Kimberly Wesley describes the way in which overemphasis on one particular format limits the development of thought in other directions.  "But how can I fit seven pages into five paragraphs?" one of Wesley's students fretted, given the assignment of a comparative analysis of two novels.  This question prompted Wesley to reflect that the five-paragraph essay tends to stifle critical thinking by forcing every argument into the same narrow form.  Just as Orwell's fictitious totalitarian regime strove to remove from the English language all words redolent of freedom and rebellion, and in so doing make it essentially impossible to entertain the concepts thereof, the constrictions of the five-paragraph format channel student thought into limited and somewhat predetermined patterns.  According to Wesley, the "emphasis on organization over content squelches complex ideas that do not fit neatly into three boxes."  Repeatedly, she saw students touch upon ideas in their papers that were never fully developed, because they did not "fit within the neat, prescribed formula" of the thesis.  Quite simply, not every argument worth making can be supported neatly by "three separate but equal points," and often critical thinking and relevant insight are sacrificed to the demands of form.  Some arguments require far more than three points of support.  Some don't need more than one or two.  And not all points of support demand or deserve equal weight: in some cases, more than a sentence or two would be redundant; other ideas may require several paragraphs to be set forth with the barest adequacy.  So deeply entrenched is the five-paragraph argument in the mind of some students that it shows up even when it's wholly inappropriate: when the assignment was a descriptive or narrative essay, for example.  Many students consistently feel the need to include three paragraphs of support in anything they write, and end up valiantly defending such stupid theses as "The Roman patricians were very interesting."

Once, when I was in high school, there was an announcement read over the intercom of who were the four best writers in the school.  I wasn't one of them.  Nor were any of the other students I knew were original, creative, and insightful thinkers with a masterful prose style.  As far as I knew, the ones who were named were competent and diligent students, but hardly extraordinary, and I was bewildered.  Then I understood: the students who were chosen to be so honored weren't the ones most likely to be shortlisted for the Pulitzer in fifteen or twenty years.  They were the ones who were best at writing five-paragraph essays: the ones who always adhered to the rubric and followed all the rules.  I, on the other hand, found the rubrics and formats painfully constricting, and my need to express my thoughts in the way I truly felt they needed to be expressed often came into painful conflict with my desire to abide by the guidelines within which I had been told to work.  I knew I was an excellent writer; I felt I had earned my artistic license, so to speak.  But my teachers, jaded perhaps by years of dismally dull student writing, had learned to grade by the rubric: no exceptions.  When students are taught to write to a formulaic standard, they learn to formulate, not to write.  Literary style becomes something to cross off a checklist.  Thesis and three points of support?  Check.  Vivid, precise language?  Check.  Quote from an expert?  Check.  Illustrative personal anecdote?  Check.  Strict adherence to the five-paragraph essay format offers no room to grow for those who already know the rules well enough to get away with breaking them, no chance for the writer to find his or her own solutions to the unique challenges and demands of each written work.  With the structure and the direction of the essay already prescribed, where is the writer's chance to build rapport, to deviate briefly from the main course of the argument into some enlightening subtopic, to startle and shock and surprise?  I grant that it may be possible for a writer of unusual gifts to compose a five-paragraph essay with wit, irony, and endearing braggadocio, but I for one have never seen it done.  Overreliance on the five-paragraph essay format teaches students to be adequate, not extraordinary.

I'm not sure some of them are even bothering to learn how to be adequate.  If writing can be reduced to a formula, if there's no reason why one essay shouldn't be very much the same as any other, why should students even bother writing their own essays in the first place?  Of course, no matter what they're told to write, there is no excuse for plagiarism, any more than there is for copying the answers to a friend's math homework.  But if there's anything duller than writing a five-paragraph essay (and there is), it's grading a whole stack of five-paragraph essays.  Nothing makes my eyes glaze over faster, except perhaps spelling tests.  Even with my near-eidetic memory for verbal material, too many essays saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same way can leave me wondering if there's some plagiarism passing under the radar - and, frankly, just how much it really matters.  If the flow of thought can be reduced to a formula, if there's one simple right way to do it, what does it matter where you get your answers?

For the sake of simplicity and adequacy, the American educational system has become overly reliant on the five-paragraph essay, to the detriment of students' critical thinking skills, literary style, and, I believe, their respect for the process of writing itself.  I believe it is time to retire this tedious form and start teaching students, especially those in the upper grades, to write with daring and originality, letting the direction of the their thoughts determine the structure in which they set them down.