05 Readings – The Age of the Essay

Paul Graham’s treatise on the essay kind of struck a chord with me. I work at a tutoring company, working with kids on their literacy skills, from Preps to Year 12’s, and a large portion of what I do is trying to teach older students how to write essays.

Some kids come in knowing nothing, but most walk in with the standard school structure they’ve been shown for years. Introduction. Body paragraphs. Conclusion. They know the words, and the order, but they’ve no idea what each consists of, or its purpose. So, you teach them, and they learn it, and can even write it with confidence – but it’s still just meaningless structure.

The take-away idea I took from the reading was Graham’s urging of disobedience. In theory, I agree. We should question what we’re told, we should absolutely challenge the accepted structure – good writing is borne from creativity, and creativity is stifled by tradition.

However, I also think it’s too simplistic to just throw away the accepted essay and put the impetus on the students. Some students will no doubt benefit from the new system, but many (I would argue the majority) would lack the necessary motivation to write, and crave the structure that we’ve relied on for hundreds of years. As we’ve gone over, there are different methods of learning – perhaps an understanding that there are different ways to write would be appropriate?