It’s really tough to say whether or not the five-paragraph essay has outlived its purpose, or whether it was defunct in the first place, or if it’s a useful tool for students after all.

In my experience as a writer, and as a student. I find that my peers are often held back by the five-paragraph system. It’s become so engrained in their psyche that they don’t know how to be rid of it. They’ve learned since grade school that a paragraph has five sentences, including a topic sentence, and an essay has at least five paragraphs, and that’s all. But, that’s the problem…that’s all. Students are never challenged to explore outside of this standard, but instead are forced to have it even more engrained in their minds for the purposes of standardized testing, and for the ease of teachers.

This format is an excellent tool to explain ideas, convince someone of something, or inform someone of something…but that function is somewhat limited to grade school. It’s always amusing to me to see students flounder in college when a professor doesn’t assign any rubric, or explain how an essay is intended to be written. Instead they say “write whatever you want,” and folks panic. I revel in that format.

That’s because I explored other kinds of writing. Rules are meant to be broken, and conventions meant to be twisted (looking at you,, E. E. Cummings), and I follow that doctrine whenever I can. Other students aren’t inquisitive enough, or don’t have an interest to do so, though.

Five paragraph essays aren’t useless, or archaic, or defunct. They’re extremely useful, but the problem is that they’re never attempted to be expanded on until it’s too late. You can’t teach a junior magician a card trick, make them do the card trick for 10 years, and then expect them to be able to saw their assistant in half. It’s not possible or practical, and you just wind up feeling bad for the magician.

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