Notes on the 5PE

Newkirk on the 5PE (More Than Stories, p. 17)

I was taught the “school essay” in the mid-1960s. I keenly recall my own introduction to the five-paragraph model; we were given a diagram of this essay with three rectangular “body” paragraphs, contained by two facing triangles, one for the opening paragraph and one for the conclusion. We were told to start generally and move to the thesis at the end of the first paragraph, make a point and defend it in each of the body paragraphs, and then conclude by reversing the pattern of the opening and move from the specific thesis to a broader statement. These opening and closing triangles were actually fairly hard to write, so the directions were simplified to the basic "say what you are going to say/say it/then say what you said."

I have tried to trace the origins of this formula...

• Janet Emig in her book about Twelfth Graders talks about the 5PE and is a critic of it...so we have been criticizing this form AT LEAST since Emig in 1971. Newkirk quotes p. 93 of her book, where she apparently discusses the 5PE. 
• Newkirk cites Peter Elbow, who calls the 5PE an anti-perplexity machine 

In the many arguments I have had on the five-paragraph theme, I regularly hear the defense that students need to learn the form first, and then it can be modified and made more complex later on. I suspect this development occurs for many writers, but this argument has always seemed to me suspect, even dangerous, as it can cover many sins. Teach them an inauthentic form, and later on they can learn the real one ("You'll need this later"). These inauthentic forms have the virtue of simplicity, and seem more teachable. But when we strip human motives from our teaching, I suspect that we make learning harder and not easier. In this book, I will try to show this more dynamic approach to exposition and argument. (17)

---

Part of the challenge of eliminating the five-paragraph essay comes from the challenge of imagining a world without this form. Of imagining having learned to write without having learned this form. Of imagining how people learn to write without factoring in this form.

I am struck by the positions people can take on the 5PE:

•       It’s a good tool for teaching writing. Keep using it
•    It’s a good transitional tool, a kind of writing training wheels that is necessary in the beginning but should eventually be abandoned.
• ·      It’s a terrible instructional practice that should be abandoned.

The most reasonable position seems to be the second one. People will see the arguments for the silliness of forcing the five-paragraph on students ad nauseum (even though that is what often happens). People will also perhaps act negatively to the 5PE going away. It is such an institution and taking away something that has been in use for many years, whether that be the 5PE or butter or mowing the lawn of the 4^th of July, is not something people are likely to do quickly or easily. Human beings are surprisingly conservative when it comes to traditions and traditional practices. If we’ve always done something in a certain way or always had something, it must be serving some useful purpose. Don’t throw it away or throw out the baby with the bath water.

So the position that many people take, and I think Carissa took, as well, is viewing the 5PE as a helpful and necessary transitional teaching tool. This seems like a reasonable position—use it during the early stages, to teach the students about structure, and then allow them, as they develop and mature, to discover other kinds of structures or to make up their own structures.

What I want to argue against, I think, is not the position that we shold get rid of the 5PE, but that it is a necessary transitional teaching tool. I want to argue against the most reasonable position.

Well, I want to argue against the 5PE, too. I want to argue that we should get rid of it entirely. But I want to argue that it shouldn't be a teaching tool. And so the challenge, finally getting to my point here, is that if I want people to accept this position that we should abandon the 5PE as a helpful teaching tool, I have to provide an alternative. If you take something away, you have to help people imagine how things could be otherwise. This task of imagining-how-things-might-be-otherwise is one of the hardest thinking tasks that humans have to do. We are so darn used to things “the way they are” and have always been. In sum, I can’t effectively advocate for the change I want without providing an alternative. It’s not enough to say: Here are the reasons why the 5PE sucks and should be gone. I need to say: Here’s what we should do instead. Here’s what a world of teaching young people to write WITHOUT the 5PE looks like.