why they can't write killing the five paragraph essay

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Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities

There seems to be widespread agreement that?when it comes to the writing skills of college students?we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can’t Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn’t caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we’re teaching writing wrong. Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn’t prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules?such as the five-paragraph essay?designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments. In Why They Can’t Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

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Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities Reprint Edition

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An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing.

There seems to be widespread agreement that―when it comes to the writing skills of college students―we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write , John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules―such as the five-paragraph essay―designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

In Why They Can't Write , Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

• ISBN-10 1421437988
• ISBN-13 978-1421437989
• Edition Reprint
• Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date March 17, 2020
• Language English
• Dimensions 5 x 0.68 x 8 inches
• Print length 288 pages
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

John Warner invites you to rethink everything you have learned about education, and writing in particular. Accept that invitation. Anyone who teaches writing will finish this book―written in the author's characteristically personable prose―with the foundations for a new approach to education, along with plenty of concrete ideas for engaging new writing assignments for their students.

Book Description

From the back cover.

"That title sounds as if it will be a grumpy polemic, but it's actually an inspiring exploration of what learning to write could be, framed by an analysis of why it so often is soul-destroying for both students and their teachers."―Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed

"Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve . . . I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for."―Ryan Boyd, LA Review of Books

" Why They Can't Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers."―Danny Anderson, Sectarian Review

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press; Reprint edition (March 17, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1421437988
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1421437989
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.68 x 8 inches
• #214 in Study & Teaching Reference (Books)
• #385 in Linguistics Reference
• #504 in Language Arts Teaching Materials

About the author

John warner.

John Warner is the author of seven books, including most recently "Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities" (Johns Hopkins UP) and "The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing" (Penguin), which draw upon his 20 years of experience as a writer and teaching of writing.

John's first book ("My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush" co-authored with Kevin Guilfoile) was written primarily in colored pencil and turned into a Washington Post #1 best seller. Since then he’s published a parody of writing advice ("Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant"), more politically minded humor ("So You Want to Be President?"), a novel ("The Funny Man"), and a collection of short stories ("Tough Day for the Army"). From 2003 to 2008 he edited McSweeney’s Internet Tendency for which he now serves as an editor at large, and writes a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune on books and reading as his alter ego, The Biblioracle. He is a contributing writer to Inside Higher Ed, and can be found on Twitter @biblioracle.

John Warner is a frequent speaker to school and college groups about issues of writing pedagogy and academic labor. You can find more information at johnwarnerwriter.com

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• Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities

In this Book

• John Warner
• Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press

Table of Contents

• Title Page, Copyright Page
• Our Writing “Crisis"
• Part One. Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay
• Johnny Could Never Write
• The Writer’s Practice
• The Five-Paragraph Essay
• Part Two. The Other Necessities
• The Problem of Atmosphere: School Sucks
• The Problem of Surveillance
• The Problem of Assessment and Standardization
• The Problem of Education Fads
• The Problem of Technology Hype: Making Teachers Obsolete Any Day Now
• The Problem of Folklore
• pp. 104-112
• The Problem of Precarity
• pp. 113-124
• Part Three. A New Framework
• pp. 125-126
• Why School?
• pp. 127-141
• Increasing Rigor
• pp. 142-145
• Making Writing Meaningful by Making Meaningful Writing
• pp. 146-153
• Writing Experiences
• pp. 154-175
• Increasing Challenges
• pp. 176-184
• Part Four. Unanswered Questions
• pp. 185-186
• What about Academics?
• pp. 187-206
• What about Grammar?
• pp. 207-212
• What about Grades?
• pp. 213-218
• What about the Children?
• pp. 219-226
• What about the Teachers?
• pp. 227-236
• In Conclusion
• pp. 237-242
• Acknowledgments
• pp. 243-246
• pp. 247-264
• pp. 265-274

Additional Information

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Why They Can't Write

John warner.

An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing. There seems to be widespread agreement that—when it comes to the writing skills of college students—we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write , John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and...

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules—such as the five-paragraph essay—designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

In Why They Can't Write , Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

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That title sounds as if it will be a grumpy polemic, but it's actually an inspiring exploration of what learning to write could be, framed by an analysis of why it so often is soul-destroying for both students and their teachers.

Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve... I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for.

Why They Can't Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers.

I wanted direction on how to better teach writing, and I got it—sample assignments that I can tweak to fit my classroom and discipline in marvelous ways. But I got so much more. I closed the book feeling energized and motivated to go back to the classroom and make changes. In fact my first reaction, as I finished, was 'I have to go write about this!' Which so perfectly encapsulates so much of what John would like to see us do as learners that I couldn't help but laugh.

What  is  to blame for students' bad writing? According to Warner, the entire context in which it is taught. He rails against school systems that privilege shallow "achievement" over curiosity and learning, a culture of "surveillance and compliance" (including apps that track students' behaviour and report it to parents in real time), an obsession with standardized testing that is fundamentally inimical to thoughtful reading and writing, and a love of faddish psychological theories and worthless digital learning projects.

An engaging, compelling, and ambitious book. Warner writes extremely well, and his main claims, driven by his expertise as both a writer and a teacher of writing, are solid and nuanced. An excellent addition to courses and programs in which future professors are being taught to teach, Why They Can't Write should be widely read.

If we really want to inspire young people to write, the tyranny of the five-paragraph essay must first be eradicated. John Warner has decades of experience turning reluctant writers into proficient and empowered ones. Wise writers, teachers, and rhetoricians will listen to this Illinoisian preach.

Why They Can’t Write offers a powerful diagnosis of what’s wrong with how we teach students to write and what we expect that writing to look like—the dreaded 'five paragraph essay,' for starters. But as Warner makes clear, the future of writing instruction doesn’t demand more efficient teaching machines to assess students’ vocabulary and punctuation. Rather, Warner calls for more meaningful writing experiences for students—experiences that encourage inquiry and recognize students’ (and teachers’) humanity.

John Warner’s Why They Can’t Write offers us a plethora of insights into what has derailed education and provides invaluable suggestions for how we can set it back on track again. Where to start? Get rid of the five-paragraph essay and any other formulaic approaches that train students to be bland, passionless writers and thinkers who score points on college entrance exams through pretention, not clarity. Plethora? Why They Can’t Write is common sense, which is to say it is revolutionary. Read it!

From the classic five paragraph essay to standardized writing and techno-hype, Warner has traced the many paths that intersect in our current Land of Bad Writing Instruction. Fortunately, he has mapped an escape route as well. An invaluable book for anyone who cares about creating and nurturing lifetime writers in the classroom.

In this profound-yet-practical, compassionate, funny, and learned book, brilliant teacher-writer-editor John Warner takes on multiple forms of 'folklore'—not just about writing and genres, but also about teaching and learning. Warner, who hones his own writing practice at Inside Higher Ed , laments the ways imitation writing, imitation learning, and... dare I say... imitation living result from harmful teaching. Business as usual: beware! Your days are numbered.

Why They Can't Write is a much-needed guide for all who are concerned about students' ability to write: teachers, parents, employers, and policymakers. Warner offers a concise, comprehensive assessment of the flawed policies that have handicapped writing instruction, and lays out a new map to guide our teaching. The book's engaging mix of research, practical experience, and common sense makes it a valuable resource for anyone who cares about good writing and good teaching.

John Warner invites you to rethink everything you have learned about education, and writing in particular. Accept that invitation. Anyone who teaches writing will finish this book—written in the author's characteristically personable prose—with the foundations for a new approach to education, along with plenty of concrete ideas for engaging new writing assignments for their students.

Book Details

Part I: Introduction Our Writing "Crisis" Johnny Could Never Write The Writer's Practice The Five-Paragraph Essay Part II: The Other Necessities The Problem of Atmosphere The Problem of Surveillance The

Part I: Introduction Our Writing "Crisis" Johnny Could Never Write The Writer's Practice The Five-Paragraph Essay Part II: The Other Necessities The Problem of Atmosphere The Problem of Surveillance The Problem of Assessment and Standardization The Problem of Educational Fads The Problem of Technology Hype The Problem of Folklore The Problem of Precarity Part III: A New Framework Why School? Increasing Rigor The Writer's Practice Making Writing Meaningful by Making Meaningful Writing Writing Experiences Increasing Challenges Part IV: Unanswered Questions What about Academics? What about Grammar? What about Grades? What about the Children? What about the Teachers? In Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix Notes Index About the Author

with Hopkins Press Books

Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities

About this ebook.

There seems to be widespread agreement that—when it comes to the writing skills of college students—we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write , John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules—such as the five-paragraph essay—designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

In Why They Can't Write , Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Ratings and reviews

About the author.

John Warner is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune , a contributing blogger for Inside Higher Ed , and an editor at large for McSweeney's Internet Tendency . He is the author or coeditor of seven books, including The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing .

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Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities Kindle Edition

An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing.

There seems to be widespread agreement that—when it comes to the writing skills of college students—we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write , John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules—such as the five-paragraph essay—designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

In Why They Can't Write , Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

• Print length 269 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date Dec 3 2018
• File size 1799 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Product description

"From the classic five paragraph essay to standardized writing and techno-hype, Warner has traced the many paths that intersect in our current Land of Bad Writing Instruction. Fortunately, he has mapped an escape route as well. An invaluable book for anyone who cares about creating and nurturing lifetime writers in the classroom."

"That title sounds as if it will be a grumpy polemic, but it's actually an inspiring exploration of what learning to write could be, framed by an analysis of why it so often is soul-destroying for both students and their teachers."

"Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve... I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for."

" Why They Can’t Write offers a powerful diagnosis of what’s wrong with how we teach students to write and what we expect that writing to look like—the dreaded 'five paragraph essay,' for starters. But as Warner makes clear, the future of writing instruction doesn’t demand more efficient teaching machines to assess students’ vocabulary and punctuation. Rather, Warner calls for more meaningful writing experiences for students—experiences that encourage inquiry and recognize students’ (and teachers’) humanity."

"John Warner invites you to rethink everything you have learned about education, and writing in particular. Accept that invitation. Anyone who teaches writing will finish this book—written in the author's characteristically personable prose—with the foundations for a new approach to education, along with plenty of concrete ideas for engaging new writing assignments for their students."

"John Warner’s Why They Can’t Write offers us a plethora of insights into what has derailed education and provides invaluable suggestions for how we can set it back on track again. Where to start? Get rid of the five-paragraph essay and any other formulaic approaches that train students to be bland, passionless writers and thinkers who score points on college entrance exams through pretention, not clarity. Plethora? Why They Can’t Write is common sense, which is to say it is revolutionary. Read it!"

" Why They Can't Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers."

"I wanted direction on how to better teach writing, and I got it—sample assignments that I can tweak to fit my classroom and discipline in marvelous ways. But I got so much more. I closed the book feeling energized and motivated to go back to the classroom and make changes. In fact my first reaction, as I finished, was 'I have to go write about this!' Which so perfectly encapsulates so much of what John would like to see us do as learners that I couldn't help but laugh."

" Why They Can't Write is a much-needed guide for all who are concerned about students' ability to write: teachers, parents, employers, and policymakers. Warner offers a concise, comprehensive assessment of the flawed policies that have handicapped writing instruction, and lays out a new map to guide our teaching. The book's engaging mix of research, practical experience, and common sense makes it a valuable resource for anyone who cares about good writing and good teaching."

"An engaging, compelling, and ambitious book. Warner writes extremely well, and his main claims, driven by his expertise as both a writer and a teacher of writing, are solid and nuanced. An excellent addition to courses and programs in which future professors are being taught to teach, Why They Can't Write should be widely read."

"In this profound-yet-practical, compassionate, funny, and learned book, brilliant teacher-writer-editor John Warner takes on multiple forms of 'folklore'—not just about writing and genres, but also about teaching and learning. Warner, who hones his own writing practice at Inside Higher Ed , laments the ways imitation writing, imitation learning, and... dare I say... imitation living result from harmful teaching. Business as usual: beware! Your days are numbered."

"What is to blame for students' bad writing? According to Warner, the entire context in which it is taught. He rails against school systems that privilege shallow "achievement" over curiosity and learning, a culture of "surveillance and compliance" (including apps that track students' behaviour and report it to parents in real time), an obsession with standardized testing that is fundamentally inimical to thoughtful reading and writing, and a love of faddish psychological theories and worthless digital learning projects."

"If we really want to inspire young people to write, the tyranny of the five-paragraph essay must first be eradicated. John Warner has decades of experience turning reluctant writers into proficient and empowered ones. Wise writers, teachers, and rhetoricians will listen to this Illinoisian preach."

From the Inside Flap

There seems to be widespread agreement that--when it comes to the writing skills of college students--we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write , John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform writing-related simulations, which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules--such as the five-paragraph essay--designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

That title sounds as if it will be a grumpy polemic, but it's actually an inspiring exploration of what learning to write could be, framed by an analysis of why it so often is soul-destroying for both students and their teachers.--Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed

Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve . . . I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for.--Ryan Boyd, LA Review of Books

Why They Can't Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers.--Danny Anderson, Sectarian Review

From the Back Cover

"That title sounds as if it will be a grumpy polemic, but it's actually an inspiring exploration of what learning to write could be, framed by an analysis of why it so often is soul-destroying for both students and their teachers."—Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed

"Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve... I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for."—Ryan Boyd, LA Review of Books

" Why They Can't Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers."—Danny Anderson, Sectarian Review

About the Author

Product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07DF6N4Z1
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press (Dec 3 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1799 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 269 pages
• #100 in Rhetoric (Kindle Store)
• #100 in Language Study & Teaching (Kindle Store)
• #168 in Linguistics (Kindle Store)

About the author

John warner.

John Warner is the author of seven books, including most recently "Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities" (Johns Hopkins UP) and "The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing" (Penguin), which draw upon his 20 years of experience as a writer and teaching of writing.

John's first book ("My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush" co-authored with Kevin Guilfoile) was written primarily in colored pencil and turned into a Washington Post #1 best seller. Since then he’s published a parody of writing advice ("Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant"), more politically minded humor ("So You Want to Be President?"), a novel ("The Funny Man"), and a collection of short stories ("Tough Day for the Army"). From 2003 to 2008 he edited McSweeney’s Internet Tendency for which he now serves as an editor at large, and writes a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune on books and reading as his alter ego, The Biblioracle. He is a contributing writer to Inside Higher Ed, and can be found on Twitter @biblioracle.

John Warner is a frequent speaker to school and college groups about issues of writing pedagogy and academic labor. You can find more information at johnwarnerwriter.com

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Why the Five-Paragraph Essay is a Problem Now—and Later

Belief #1: The five-paragraph essay is a problem now

Current common approaches for teaching writing are simultaneously too punishing and not nearly challenging enough. Part of the problem is how “rigor” is viewed in education. “Rigor” means “strictness” and “severity.” It is an artifact of a different time and a different mentality toward schooling. It remains popular mostly as a way to invoke days of yore that are supposedly better than today. . . . When students say a class was “hard,” they often mean “confusing” or “arbitrary,” rather than stimulating and challenging. (2018, 142)

We would add the following to the list of arbitrary and confusing approaches to teaching writing: rules that demand paragraphs will contain five (or nine or whatever) sentences; the topic sentence will always be first in each paragraph; and the thesis or claim must always be directly stated in the introduction. These rules do not represent excellence in writing. On the contrary: in many cases, adhering to them wrings the goodness out of writing. The writer is punished by being shoehorned into a form. Peter Elbow, noted writing researcher, argues that “the five-paragraph essay tends to function as an anti-perplexity machine” (2012, 308). Katherine Bomer agrees, adding, “There is no room for the untidiness of inquiry or complexity and therefore no energy in the writing” (2016, xi). Not only is energy drained from the writing when students practice mechanized thinking, but students also lose the valuable practice of generating and organizing ideas. When the form is predetermined, much of the writer’s important decision-making has already been stripped, which is one reason Penny is now encountering so many college students who believe they cannot solve their own writing problems.

We agree with John Warner’s notion that approaches taken by writing teachers are “not nearly challenging enough” (2018, 142). The form does the thinking for the student, and the student simply plugs in and follows. Without an understanding of options, students can’t imagine how a different form might better engage an audience or how changing the structure might better communicate their ideas. Teachers in high school rarely (if ever) meet across content areas to consider how often students are writing the exact same formulaic essays. The teachers at our schools never met to have these discussions. Students need numerous opportunities to study the various forms an essay can take, and they need repeated practice experimenting. This is not our only objection, however. The lack of student decision-making and agency is compounded when students are constrained by the teacher’s choice of subject and the lack of an authentic audience for their writing. We like how novelist Lily King explains the problems with standardized essays about books:

While you’re reading [the book] rubs off on you and your mind starts working like that for a while. I love that. That reverberation for me is what is most important about literature. . . . I would want kids to talk and write about how the book makes them feel, what it reminded them of, if it changed their thoughts about anything. . . . Questions like [man versus nature] are designed to pull you completely out of the story. . . . Why would you want to pull kids out of the story? You want to push them further in, so they can feel everything the author tried so hard to create for them. (2020, 271)

Night has fallen and is swirling and twirling around me. Gold chains hang across his neckline like trophies against a prize. The fine oil paintings and white pillars line sunken walls. It is a life filled with artificial riches, swishing like change in a pocket of hope. And the noises it made rustled in our dreams.

Abby writes with verve and authenticity. Jillian, the same age, is sitting in a first-year college classroom without the skill set to make the decisions expected of her. And we know this: students get to Abby’s level of essay writing when they’ve experienced a lot of practice in struggling with generating ideas and organizing their thinking. The road to excellence is rife with trial and error. It is up to us to entrust our young writers to wrestle with their decisions. Doing so matters now. And later.

Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the co-author (with Kelly Gallagher) of   Four Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency , as well as the bestselling  180 Days .

Penny is the author of  Book Love  and  Write Beside Them , which won the NCTE James Britton award. She also co-authored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and co-edited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves’ work,  Children Want to Write .  She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award from NCTE’s Conference on English Leadership. In the summer Penny teaches graduate students at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes.  Throughout the year, she travels across the U.S. and Canada (and once in awhile quite a bit farther) speaking to teachers about empowering students through independence in literacy. She believes in curiosity, engagement, and deep thinking in schools for both students and their teachers. Penny stands on the shoulders of her mentors, the Dons (Murray & Graves), and the Toms (Newkirk & Romano), in her belief that intentional teaching in a reading and writing workshop brings the greatest student investment and learning in a classroom.

Learn more about Penny Kittle on her websites,   pennykittle.net   and   booklovefoundation.org , or follow her on   twitter .

Topics: Penny Kittle , Creative Writing , Kelly Gallagher , Teaching Writing , 4 Essential Studies

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Why they can't write: killing the five-paragraph essay and other necessities (hardcover).

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There seems to be widespread agreement that--when it comes to the writing skills of college students--we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write , John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules--such as the five-paragraph essay--designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

In Why They Can't Write , Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

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Josh Bernoff

“Why They Can’t Write”: John Warner’s brilliant analysis of the failure of teaching

Anyone who has had any interaction with education these days — as a student, a teacher, or a parent — is likely to have the feeling that something fundamental is awry. John Warner’s has some good ideas on what’s wrong and how to fix it. His book Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities is as clear, unequivocal, and arresting as a slap in the face. Everyone should read it.

John Warner has taught writing at four colleges and contributes to the Chicago Tribune and Inside Higher Education. Based on that, you’d expect this book to be an analysis of the teaching and learning of the skill of writing. But the problems with writing are emblematic of the problems of education in general — and this book doesn’t stop in the English Composition department.

The tragedy of the five-paragraph essay and standardized writing tests

Start with public school. Simply put, the teaching of writing in high school does not teach students how to write.

Warner starts with the analogy of training wheels on a bicycle. You bike with the training wheels and you imagine that you are learning to ride a bike — but instead, free of the actual need to balance, you are learning only to propel the bicycle forward. Take the training wheels off, and you’re going to fall, whether you’re three years old or 13. All the training wheels do is fool you and delay your learning.

It is the same with the “writing” tasks students undertake in school. The execrable exercise that is the five-paragraph essay is a great example. Students must fill in the blanks in a standardized format that rewards typing, not thinking. But the five-paragraph essay is easy to teach and, more importantly, easy to grade. This allows teachers to be, at least in a cursory examination, more efficient — that is, to teach a greater number of students in the same time period. Thus “education” happens — and as Warner and every other college professor has experienced, the students arrive at college with no idea how to conceive ideas, how to do research, how to organize ideas, how to thread them together, how to satisfy the needs of an audience, and how to delight with the tools of language.

Similarly, Warner decries the little reading and writing exercises that we use to evaluate student writers’ skill with standardized tests. Reading a passage and answering questions about it rewards “close reading” but not the generation of ideas. The essay portion of standardized tests — started in 2005, and abandoned in 2014 — was a test of whether students could generate a bunch of words that a grader could grade quickly. As Warner writes:

The original version of the SAT essay was a timed, handwritten exam with a prompt closed in terms of topic but entirely open in terms of content; furthermore, access to outside sources and research was forbidden, making for a set of conditions under which precisely zero writers work in the real world. . . . The resulting writing was scored in no more than three minutes by anonymous graders hired as temporary workers who had to adhere to production quotas. Imagine Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory, only with students’ blue books instead of bonbons. . . . In fact, to do well on the essay-writing portion of the SAT, Les Perelman, former director of MIT’s Writing Across the Curriculum program and an expert in designing and evaluating writing assessments, had some advice: “Just make stuff up.” “It doesn’t matter if [what you write] is true or not,” Perelman said. “In fact, trying to be true will hold you back.”

The education hype cycle

Many of us are familiar with Gartner’s hype cycle , an insightful deconstruction of how the tech and business media adopts, hypes, and then becomes disillusioned with new technologies, almost independent of their actual merit.

But until Warner pointed it out, I hadn’t realized the same hype cycle applies in education. Only the difference is, instead of companies chasing illusory gains from blockchain or virtual reality, we recreate the entire educational system around the latest educational theory and then subject a whole generation to it.

In teaching, these fads have included “self-control” (along the lines of the now debunked “marshmallow test”), standardized tests and No Child Left Behind, Common Core, “ grit ,” and especially, AI-driven computerized and personalized learning that demoralizes children — but frees up teachers from the drudgery of actually teaching.

Warner’s deconstruction the education hype cycle is insightful and brutally honest:

1. Research uncovers an interesting finding that seems correlated to student “success.” 2. Breathless coverage trumpets a new “revolution” in learning which will unlock all students’ potential regardless of race and economic background. 3. “Success” is defined down to something quantifiable like scores on a standardized test. 4. Very quickly, all nuances surrounding the finding are quickly washed away, so any underlying causes are pushed aside in the interest of raising scores on the test that matters above all. 5. Once the key measurement has been determined, a behaviorist approach is adopted. . . [We] adopt policies that require compliance, rather than developing the underlying skill. 6. The burden of implementing the new curriculum falls entirely on teachers via administrative diktat. Nothing is removed from teachers’ responsibility to make way for this additional requirement . . . Teachers are to be held accountable for how their students perform on these new metrics while being given very little if any assistance in implementing these new programs. 7. Ultimately, nothing much seems to happen. Some students improve on these new metrics; others don’t. To the extent that they change, it’s difficult to correlate those changes to the curriculum. Basically, it’s noise. 8. Enthusiasm fades, and questions arise as to whether the latest approach is sensible. Ultimately, even supporters of the initiative climb off the bandwagon, though the lack of success is almost always blamed on “poor implementation” rather than a flawed premise. 9. A new magic bullet arrives on the scene. Return to Step 1.

The students pay

As Warner describes, this educational environment has created a demoralizing experience for everyone involved. Students are far more likely to say “I hate school,” even though they love actual learning. School is a drudge-filled chore for everyone involved, swallowing students’ motivation and resulting in an epidemic of depression and medication to fix it.

A prescription to fix how we teach writing

Warner is not just complaining about the problem. He has a solution. And it’s remarkably simple. The challenge is how to implement it.

The components of the solution are these:

• Limit the number of students per teacher, and pay the teachers a living wage.
• Assign real-world writing assignments (like a review, or a persuasive argument) and give the students the tools to analyze good examples of people who do those well. They should work inside an actual rhetorical situation with an actual intended audience.
• Focus on writing practice and rewriting based on comments from the teacher. (This means that the teacher has to have the time to generate thoughtful comments.)
• Grade based on quantity of thoughtful writing created, rather than on achieving or approaching perfection. As it turns out (at least in Warner’s classes), the more work the students put in, the more improvement they achieve, and that is worth rewarding.

The result is that students make meaningful writing, which is far more likely to make them better writers than squeezing their work into some pre-determined type of box that has so little to do with the writing they will do in the real world.

I am not doing justice to Warner’s prescription, because there is a lot more detail to it. But I found myself cheering on page after page, because it’s just so much closer to how real writers learn, whether those writers are in high school English classes, college composition classes, or writing reports or copy or emails in corporations.

How I teach writing — and maybe, how we should teach everything

Most of my experience is limited to writing workshops for corporate writers — in which they analyze the bullshit in their own company’s writing and learn to fix it — as well as editing actual writing content.

I sometimes charge $1000 or more for editing a single document. And when I do edit that document, I analyze it in detail, along with the writers’ attitudes that are causing the problems. Some writing teachers that Warner describes are getting less for teaching an entire course full of students than I get for editing a single document.

Obviously, my method does not scale. But some elements do apply. The close read of people’s writing and the thoughtful feedback makes a huge difference.

If we can give students that experience as many times as possible, they will inevitably learn to be better writers.

It’s not automated.

It’s not based on the latest fad.

It’s good old fashioned editing and improving — human-to-human teaching and learning.

I’m convinced that Warner is right about how to fix the way we teach writing.

And I’m wondering how many of these techniques could be applied to how we teach so many other things.

Let’s get off the educational hype cycle and give hands-on teaching another chance. The cure for education’s problems is teachers, not curriculum fads. I’m sure of it.

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Wonderful analysis. It points to the commodification of education (and students?). Education is a human endeavor – just like learning is. At its most effective, it is deeply personal and inter-personal. Our educational system isn’t structured that way.

This is awesome! Though it doesn’t reflect the purpose and function of bicycle training wheels. I think most people don’t remember how they learned on training wheels, but their purpose is actually to let you ride while developing your sense of balance. It becomes obvious when you’re balancing on your own and need them taken off.

Once you get into the meat of the argument, it becomes more convincing. Especially when it calls for smaller class sizes and adequately paid teachers. Dependency-building teaching methods, such as the five-paragraph essay and 3 Rs fundamentals, are pretty much necessary in oversized classes.

Who knows? Maybe some of the gimmicky new methods *could* work better with decently small classes. But that means that small classes and good working conditions for teachers are the only things that could make them worth trying.

Perhaps we should treat students as if they’re apprentices. It works for trade education

Not sure I follow your reference to grit. The referenced article doesn’t seem to debunk the link between grit and academic performance. Am I misreading the article? Or misinterpreting the reason you referred to it?

The book describes the rise and fall of “grit” as a desired measure in pages 79-85. Angela Duckworth and Paul Tough, who popularized it in 2012 and 2013, have backpedaled. Duckworth resigned from the group implementing it in California, saying “I do not think we should be doing this, it is a bad idea.” And Paul Tough agrees with John Warnock that it fails to account for the inequities in the challenges children face before even arriving at the school door.

All my life, real learning occurs with me, when I get the desire. Then I go find the teachers. I just wonder how often this is the case for others.

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