The Five-Themed Paragraph: Helpful or Hurtful?

        What if all the things we were being taught in school were of no relative use in the real world? Would people still go to school? Would there be any point in going to school if nothing we learned would help us in life? Hopefully the answers for most would be no to the latter questions. This leads us to the five-themed paragraph. This is a structure that is commonly taught but of no practical use once we are out of school. So why are we being taught it? Furthermore, is it hurtful to us as students to have this structure be exemplified to us as the way we should write? To take it a step even further, should the citizens of the US be paying taxes for kids to go to school and be cheated of learning real/useful writing skills?

        I think it's always important to consider the other views of an argument no matter what your stance is. For this reason, let's examine the pro-five paragraph side for a moment. In defense of the structure being taught, it must be taken into consideration that most high school teachers have an enormous number of students to teach, and in turn an overload of papers that they must grade every time they assign a paper. So assigning these five-paragraph themed papers makes it easier on the teachers who are underpaid for all they do to get through more than 200 papers. Also, it is a valid point that the five-paragraph gives students a basic structure to learn to build ideas on.

         But, is it worth it to make the load easier to all students' detriment? To send them off to college unprepared to write different types of papers such as narrative or research papers? The five-paragraph can very easily constrain the writer. It's hard to fit all your ideas into, can be awkward to work with (not all subject types can fit the structure), and most significantly it doesn't teach how to write creatively and learn how to make our own structure. It limits us. When graded in a five-paragraph theme, teachers can't look at the content of our ideas. How are students supposed to know if the substance of their work is good if they are only being critiqued for if they can fill a certain structure with disregard to what that structure says about any given topic?

        The five-paragraph theme is an excellent starting point for students to learn basic writing skills. But if this idea isn't built upon, students writing can't improve writing or develop more complex ideas. This leaves many that can't conform to the structure feeling like bad or failed writers. Students should be taught this structure, but then be taught how to build upon it and learn how to create their own structure and more thoroughly delve into ideas. Real-life application and preparation for the next part of a student's life is what should be kept in mind when schools decide what to teach students. Not the easiest way to grade a paper. Please, start teaching us skills we’ll need and make our school experience worthwhile.