What comes to mind when you think about the traditional 5-paragraph essay? Do you cringe? Sadly, many students only know “essay” as a 5-paragraph, tightly structured writing assignment that must check all the boxes of a standardized formula. How did essays in school get so far away from essays in the world? In her newest book, The Journey is Everything, Katherine Bomer makes a case for the benefits of authentic essay writing that breaks free of the 5-paragraph formula used in most middle and high school English classes.
Katherine wants to restore essays in schools as writing to think; because the act of writing provides a visual tool, one of the most powerful tools humans have in aiding the process of thinking. Katherine wants students to be able to write the essays that they want to write and people want to read… She says if we give students the freedom to think, without forcing ideas into templates, they can actually produce better writing.
We started our conversation around what essay looks like in the real world?
Read more at Katherine's website here and be sure to follow her on Twitter.
Below is a transcript of our conversation:
We started our conversation around what essays look like in the real world.
Katherine: Well, that is really kind of the basis of the argument of the book is that while essay is … I use the word alive on purpose because it does feel like this giant animal or something that's just breathing. Last night, on the airplane, I was reading essays in the latest New Yorker magazine. This morning, first thing, I'm of course on the internet, looking on at people's blogs and looking on the news, and there are essays about Orlando and gun control, and there was the idea of America right now kind of sitting in politics. Of course, essay doesn't need to be so serious. There also, I think of a lot of comedy monologues that are really essayistic. Some of my favorites, Louis C. K. He's one of my favorites who just seems to go on this little essayistic riff sometimes about an idea.
I would say that in the world, right now, on the internet, the blog is probably the closest thing to the essay that I can find. There are thousands and thousands of them out there. People are writing this constantly and reading this constantly in the world, in their lives. In schools, we are unfortunately still locked into a system of a formulaic, usually five paragraph, famously, form that has been around for generations. My mother is going to be ninety-eight years old this year, and she remembers writing similar kind of formulaic essays in high school, and hating them. Hating them is pretty much what everyone says when you bring up the word. I often begin my workshops with, "What do you think of when you hear the word essay?" People's, "[inaudible 00:03:11]." They immediately groan, and teachers hate grading them, and students hate writing them. I just think we can do better. Why should we write those formulas when we know we can write better?
Brett: You recommend that teachers have students read essays before they try and write them. Why is that?
Katherine: Well, reading before you write is something that all writers do. Writers read voraciously, they widely and voraciously, because they're constantly feeding themselves with ideas and language, and even interesting ways to structure pieces of writing.
