As a society, we are always told to follow and trust the “experts” because they seem to know more than the average person. What we don’t realize are the dangers behind that.
In the book Bad Ideas About Writing, two authors by the name of Susan Naomi Bernstein and Elizabeth Lowry put effort into convincing students to let go of an old method of writing into a new one. The article’s name is “The Five-Paragraph Essay Transmits Knowledge”.
“learning” By Brett Jordan. Unsplashed.
Bernstein and Lowry explain how the idea of following a certain formula to write an essay is wrong due to it being so generic and would not involve a way to come up with new ideas that are innovative and more modern so it needs to be reformed, “For first year college students, the five-paragraph essay is a kind of catch-all for the would-be writer, a formula that students are often taught works for any kind of essay, on any topic, upon any occasion. Except when it doesn’t” (Bernstein and Lowry, 225). The authors are worried that this type of writing scheme will be so limited that the writers won’t be able to use it anywhere else in life due to how limited the five-paragraph essay idea is.” If our education system promotes modes of learning that apply only to school but not to the rest of our lives, chances are minimal that any of us will retain what we have learned beyond our lives out of school.” (Bernstein and Lowry, 225). Here, they argue that if a learning material is only used in school, then it will not be remembered for the rest of our lives.
“critical thinking” by NeONBRAND. unsplashed
One of the notable sources that these authors have mentioned is from a book by the name of pedagogy of the oppressed by Paulo Freire, published in 1968. Paulo Freire was an author and activist against the learning system. A famous concept Freire is famous for is the banking model, where he discusses how it is implemented in our education system and how it is ruining our ability to expand our knowledge. “This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.” (Freire, 69). Freire addresses the issue of passing down knowledge without questioning it. Where the teacher is the one who is passing it down to the students who are the victims of a system that they cannot control.
A better idea would involve Freire, Bernstein, and Lowry’s arguments combined. For example, one could create a system where the students mostly would get feedback from a professional with more experience after experimenting and trying different methods. If the experiment gave a positive outcome, then the student could start using that method. This idea would satisfy both Bernstein and Lowry “For example, students could be asked how they might rewrite five-paragraph essays in more imaginative ways. “(Bernstein and Lowry 229). This idea would also satisfy Paulo Freire because of his problem-solving idea which discussed about solutions to end limitations on critical thinking. “Problem-posing education, coined by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation. Freire used problem posing as an alternative to the banking model of education.”(Wikipedia) With that in mind, it could be confirmed that these three authors are all in favor of ending a formula based system and encouraging critical thinking.
“essay” by Dan Counsell. unsplashed
The authors of both writings, Bernstein, Lowry, and Freire can all agree that the system is broken, and it needs to be fixed where the expert is leading the uneducated in the wrong direction because it is easier for that expert to teach that victim a certain formula rather than teach them how to think critically” The five-paragraph essay is widely believed to be useful in terms of making students assimilate, absorb, store, categorize, and organize new knowledge, but it is not useful in terms of getting students to actually use that knowledge creatively or critically for productive problem posing and solving.”(Bernstein and lowry,226) .
“Author” by Darius Bashar. Unsplashed
In conclusion, authors often get inspired by other authors to write their own work just like Lowry and Bernstein used Freire as an example, however these two authors do not follow a certain way of writing in every single essay, instead they question their own writing all the time to be able to think critically.
Are there any other and better ways to write essays?
works cited
Susan Naomi Bernstein and Elizabeth Lowry “The Five-Paragraph Essay Transmits Knowledge” Bad Ideas About Writing, edited by Cheryl E Ball and Drew M Loewe, West Virginia University Libraries, 2017, pp. 225–229.
Paulo Freire ” Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, pp. 71
Wikipedia contributors. (2021, January 29). Problem-posing education. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:41, December 2, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Problem-posing_education&oldid=1003473021
