Reading Paul Graham’s “The Age of the Essay” was comforting and frustrating at the same time.  I loved every bit of it as it validated thought processes I have in my own creative practice that after a long time of ignoring or attempting to fight, I now actually “trust my instincts”. Well, more than I once did anyway.

However, the conflict Graham arose in me comes from my interaction with the year 11 and 12 kids I tutor. I’ve been tutoring VCE students since I left high-school 3 years ago.  And every year since leaving, I’ve felt increasingly hypocritical trying to teach the nuances of that soul-bleaching “TEXT-RESPONSE ESSAY”. Shudder.

My students see me a certain way: as a tutor who excelled at high-school English, loves the English language and can wield words into verses of the silkiest poetry that your fingers ever caressed as they followed the line of print on a page. And the dreaded essay? PAH! She can make them write themselves, they think. Presumably.

My students stand on different levels of confidence when it comes to English but I’ve had one common experience with all of them. At some point they’ve all expressed an idea, an original occurrence that’s quite insightful and validates my method of teaching…but then they’ll ask me one of these questions:

 “Am I allowed to say that?”

“ Am I allowed to put that in?”

“ Am I allowed to write that there?”

 

AAARRRRRGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

In those moments I’m not sure if I’m more frustrated at the schooling system or my students for asking permission to write down a thought. But then I remember what it was like to be sitting in classroom with 25 other students, being taught the “hamburger structure” of an essay. The best marks would be determined by whose lettuce was the crunchiest and whose meat patty was the most succulent. But what if you didn’t eat meat and you teacher didn’t like your awesome-but-not-normal chickpea and sweet potato patty?

As much as I would love to just give them Paul Graham’s essay complete with highlightings of what I think are the most brilliant points, I wont. Because you pass high-school by giving your markers what they want.  Such is the system, that as a tutor, I won’t be considered any good if I tell my students otherwise.

So I impart  this wisdom from beyond the class room walls in small incremental and sneaky dosages. Just enough to enhance their writing so that something stands out as different (but not too different) to the marker.

I tell them to not worry so much about the traditional confinements of essay structure that they’ve been thought and let their thoughts flow and not bring down the dam walls if an idea seems too complex to write. I’ve noticed that original ideas only seem “too complex” because the high-school essay structure we’ve been fed is way too simple. It doesn’t allow  for complexity and when you try to explore a complex structure within that paradigm, it just sounds undisciplined.

The idea of having no structure is as daunting as facing the task of writing another literature essay itself.  And not just for high-school kids. However by the time you get to university, the Essay is such a dated, simple task that university students are jaded by it.  It transforms itself into the archetypal, university-level essay with a minimum of 10 academic references that is forgotten once eagerly pushed through the drop-off box.

How do we transform this way of thinking about the essay? It seems that as long as the Essay is tied to an academic context, it will be approached with much the same attitude.

This is why this reading did me a whole lot of good—because it almost feels like permission granted for the Essay to have an alternate existence.  I may even email Graham’s essay to my students. Not to challenge them, but as reassurance of the freedom and potential they face once they leave high-school.