BFTP: Strictures and creativity: the 5 paragraph essay

Strictures and creativity: the five-paragraph essay

The five-paragraph essay is a form of essay having five paragraphs:

• one introductory paragraph,
• three body paragraphs with support and development, and
• one concluding paragraph. Wikipedia

I learned to write and taught writing myself using the five-paragraph essay as a means of structuring  writing. I can't say that I use the form specifically any longer, preferring a more narrative voice, but I am I glad I was taught the form and required to use it. Despite reading that its day has passed, that  teachers are stifling creativity by asking students for supporting evidence, a thesis statement, transitional phrases, and a conclusion, knowing the rules of the five-paragraph expository essay is beneficial for all writers.

Good writing is well-organized writing. By asking one's writing students to outline their thoughts, the form helps the reader navigate the topic as well. The old admonition "Tell'm what you're going to tell'm, tell'm, and tell'm what you just told'm helps to effectively structure one's ideas. Stream of conscious writing may work for avant guarde literary types, but an organized essay is a good foundation on which to build solid writing skills.

Organization does not make a compelling piece of writing without credible supporting evidence. By asking for three supporting ideas, reasons, or pieces of evidence, the five-paragraph essay form moves the writing from pure opinion to opinion that has some thought behind it. While not popular among many contemporary politicians, readers like knowing the "why" a stand is taken. Asking students to demonstrate through evidence why they might make a statement is one of the more important whole-life skills one can use - one more human beings ought to practice.

But don't strict rules of organization and evidence restrict creativity as critics suggest? Yes, when creativity is not an expectation. Other strict literary forms - the Elizabethan sonnet, the haiku, even the limerick - have not kept poets from writing original and impactful works. The PechaKucha, a presentation format that allows only 20 images to be shown each for 20 seconds, forces speakers to think qualitatively rather than quantitatively about their message. While teachers need to be careful not to over prescribe requirements of any assignment (As Chris Lehmann warns, "If you assign a project and get back 30 of the exact same thing, that's not a project, that's a recipe."), being creative within the confines of a classic writing structure, can be challenging, but is certainly possible.

The usefulness of the five-paragraph essay is not diminished by word processing, social media, or texting. Structure, organization, and creativity shaped by rules are all attributes of good writing that the form demands, when a good writing teacher demands it as well. Call me a traditionalist, even a sentimentalist, but along with attention to grammar, spelling, and other hallmarks of good writing, I hope teachers keep using this essay format as a tool. Consider how well it served this blog post.

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Original post 12/28/15

BFTP: The good girls/good boys club

While this was written as a reflection on the lack of change in the educational system, I am growing increasingly aware that it also applies to the larger society...

Job preservation is commonly cited as a factor in resistance to change in education. But I am suspicious there is a stronger reason as well.

I call it the good girls/boys club.

Most of our school leaders - directors, principals, superintendents, union leaders, etc. -  have been very well served by our traditional education system. Performing well academically, conforming to standards and norms, and even behaving well have allowed our current teaching staff and administration to obtain the degrees needed to get their current positions. (Myself included.) 

So consciously or unconsciously, do we as humans protect and maintain systems that have personally served us well?

As my rather cynical (and still unpublished) article "The Illusion of Change" suggests:

... what impetus is there for innovation if the one in charge of change has done quite well under the current system? They don’t pull superintendents, principals, or classroom teachers from the ranks of those whom the current education system failed! (Well, maybe a few tech directors, but they are different case.) College professors are the total masters the educational system – having risen to pinnacle of academia simply by being very, very good at “school.” And you expect them to change this perfect system that rewards the best - they themselves? Please.

The reason these  “leaders” have the ability, the position, the power to make change is that they have all have succeeded in some fashion in a traditional education model. And subliminal questions run through every decision they make - "Is this change going to screw up the system that has made it possible for me to hold my position?" "Why do that which might shake me from my current branch?"

They will therefore only initiate those changes that don't really change anything very much, that won't threaten their standing in their school or community. Risks are for fools, especially when taken for anyone outside their own genetic make up or social class. Both Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel were, after all, quite fictional.

As our populations become more diverse, as our technologies change, and as the demands placed on education grow, we in the good girls and boys club must be aware of how we may be protecting an outmoded system that serves an increasingly small slice of the population. Future educators, perhaps?

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Original post 11/12/15

BFTP: Grammar is good for you - relevance and teaching

OK, I ranted on this same topic not long ago, but I found this old post which is better...

1. Grammatical errors are distracting.
2. Grammatical errors interfere with clarity.
3. Although exceptions abound, there is a correlation between seniority and literacy.
4. Just as “Loose lips sink ships,” according to the World War II poster, gruesome grammar hurts happiness.
5. People who don’t like you will point out your errors to attack you and undermine your position.
6. “Bad writing makes bright people look dumb,” as William Zinsser once observed so succinctly.
7. Too many little errors will make you seem careless, sloppy and slovenly.
8. A single big error, such as writing, “My principle concern is …” when it should be “My principal concern is …” will make readers (a least some readers) think you don’t know what you’re talking about.
9. Errors annoy people, as I annoyed Paula in my last column when I wrongly questioned the use of “secrete” in this sentence: “The offenders range from international banks to small-town mortgage lenders, which together helped secrete more than 10,000 U.S.-related accounts holding more than $10 billion.” (Paula wrote: “I grabbed my trusty Oxford dictionary and there it was as a secondary definition of secrete: ‘conceal, put into hiding.’ I’m used to people who think they’re smarter than everyone else and often show their ignorance by not verifying their facts before blasting others. But for you to join in the bashing on this common of a word was troubling.”)
10. Good grammar will make people want to go out with you, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, as it made Katy von Kühn want to go out with her future husband, Sam, when she saw his posting on a dating site: “The whole reason I responded to Sam was the way he formulated his e-mail.”

Top 10 reasons you should learn to use proper grammar, Stephen Wilbers, Star Tribune, November 15, 2015

While I am by no means a perfect grammarian, I'm good. (And I know as I write this that I will make a grievous error somewhere in this post.) I did not learn parallel construction, passive voice, subject-verb agreement, and the differences among their, there, and they're as a student. I learned them as I taught the subjects to high school students during my years as a classroom teacher.

Warriner's English Grammar and Composition was my textbook and I used it like crazy, moving chapter by chapter, exercise by exercise. As I remember, this is more or less what the book looked like 40 years ago. A merciful god has since seen to it that the text is now out of publication, but 1946 to 1987 is a pretty good run for a textbook to be in print. I must not have been the only teacher in its thrall.

Despite my primitive and probably ineffective teaching methods and materials, I always liked teaching grammar because I felt it was in my students' best interest that they become proficient in its application. While not being able to articulate as many reasons for its importance as Wilbers does in the quote above, I convinced more than a few of my students that their success in life would rely heavily on being good communicators - and good communicators needed good grammar.

Until teachers understand "why" what they are teaching is in their best students' interest (WIIFM), those in their classrooms or online courses will be bored, tuned out, and quite possibly disruptive. Might lack of relevance be the reason why so many students turn to their electronic devices in the classroom when these "distractions" offer activities of interest?

I'd make a terrible history teacher. I love history but would have a tough time making a case for its importance to students. Same with calculus and coding and physics and Latin. But all of us need to make the case in meaningful ways for the importance of our lessons in kids' lives. If we can't, we should seriously ask just why the hell we're teaching.

Original post 11/20/15