Essay writing

I read lots and lots of essays each week, most between 700 and 1500 words. It's sort of compulsive, and has been since I was in high school. Even when I don't have to, I still read them a lot.

The form of an essay, like the form of a blockbuster movie, is usually pretty predictable, and, as with movies, a lot of the time when an essay goes awry it's as much to do with the structure as anything else. I notice the form now, of course, but I didn't always, and I don't think many folkspay much attention to it. But, as someone who has written essays for a living for quite a while pointed out to me the other night, essays have a basic, almost mechanical structure that one learns to build over and over again. That's what makes them work, and what makes them so economical and effective.

But somehow I got to thinking about this in context of education. As anyone who's ever read, much less taught, a high school English or comp course, the vast majority of kids just don't have any clue how to write an essay. It's a mystery to them, some ancient secret, like heiroglyphics, having to do with a thesis and a five paragraphs. They're taught that there's a formula, maybe, but they don't have a natural understanding of why or how that formula works.

Why is that? Maybe it's for the stupendously obvious reason that most high schoolers, and even many college students, don't read essays. If they read their school assignments (which is unlikely), they're reading entry level academic texts and standard canon novels. But they're not getting to read smart columnists, critics, and other regular essayists on any sort of normal basis. If they read short critical essays, it's most likely that they're reading some of those hideous example essays culled from other students. But even the best of those are mediocre, written, it's likely, by not by great essayists, but by students who've learned to put a few simple sentences in order and game their graders by just not screwing up. The whole system seems designed to produce mediocrity.

Seems to me the best way to teach essay writing isn't just by spelling out the formula a few times, but by giving people daily exposure to it, and letting it seep in through repetition. Plus, reading clearly written essays about current topics is bound to be more fun than most of the standardized junk that shows up in high school text books.