Especially the 5-paragraph essay. Doubly so where paragraphs are rigidly-defined as "a collection of five or more sentences". I argued with a lot of teachers over that one.

All it did was teach kids how to write boring simple sentences to meet the implicit "punctuation quota". An equal amount of content compacted into a couple of complex/compound sentences would actually result in marks off.

You have to learn the rules before you break the rules. The 5 paragraph essay taught me a lot about how to create a convincing written argument. The rules are:

1. Start with a hook. Engage the reader.

2. Present the ideas (2-3) that you will be discussing in the essay. Have you ever read a rambling blog post? Yeah, they suck. There's no direction and you don't retain much.

Also, 2-3 ideas in one essay is a great number. There's all those studies that say we can only hold 5 things in working memory at once, blah blah blah. Keeping the essay focused on a few core ideas helps the reader retain them better, and the writer to have a well defined scope.

3. Extrapolate the concise ideas in 2-3 concise paragraphs. Ever read a rambling blog post? Yeah, they suck. Telling students to keep paragraphs in 3-5 sentences helps the essay communicate the ideas in a concise manner.

It also helps block out the text in small visually appealing blocks. Ever read super condensed very long paragraphs? Yeah, they suck. It helps to break up your thoughts with some whitespace. (It's almost like coding benefits from this as well...)

4. Conclude your essay. Reiterate what you wanted to cover. This helps the reader retain the ideas, and it allows the author to tie up the ideas in a nice bow. I love when I finish a book or essay and everything comes together and reaffirms what I've been reading the whole time.

This format is not only great building blocks, but it helps you write larger volumes. If you repeat these small steps several times, you create chapters. If you repeat these steps on a macro level, the chapters tie together into a cohesive piece of literature.

These unnecessary "quotas" may sound meaningless, but a lot of people have thought very hard about how to create basic building blocks writers can follow. These building blocks allow the writers to create concise, well formed arguments. "Boring simple sentences" are extremely conducive to clear and concise writing. I'll take boring sentences that form complex ideas over complex fluff that describes nothing any day. (This is almost analogous to good code design too, weird...)

I get the goal of the framework, and I did then as well. It just isn't expressed well, and it's even worse in execution. I think kids are smart enough to handle a more ambiguous "five-section essay". All the same rules apply, but marks off can then be directed towards lack of clarity or belaboring a point. Truly bad writing, y'know?

Maybe it's a matter of opinion, but I believe that the grading process is a sufficient guardrail. When the theories are made rigid, it's usually just to ease the grading. I'm okay with that in the right context. In this instance, however, I think it's self-defeating.

The 5-paragraph essay is the larval form of the 6-page research paper. As a scientist, you will similarly face reprimands from reviewers if you deviate from the format.

Is it better to teach a good writer a specific format, or to teach a specific format in order to teach people how to write?

Most people will not become scientists. Those who do can quickly pick up the additional burden of formatting requirements, when necessary.

Most people will encounter venues where they need to conform to arbitrary and seemingly pointless formats in order to publish there. Becoming comfortable doing so without throwing a fit is a skill that needs to be learned to operate in modern society.

I'm not throwing a fit. I'm saying that the five-paragraph essay is supposed to teach clear writing, and it doesn't.

If you want to teach conformity to arbitrary and seemingly pointless strictures, the rest of the public education system does that already.

I didn't mean to say it's you throwing a fit, I meant to say that students are throwing fits. Unless you're a student? Sorry I didn't convey that clearly.

I wouldn't say that the purpose of the 5-paragaph essay is to teach clear writing. It serves the same purpose as mandating a format for a conference; no format mandate means you get N formats, which makes evaluating them much harder.

Which is exactly the type of writing that an AI excels at. Educators have made their own bed, and GPT-3 is just tucking them in.