Have you
ever had to write an essay?
Of course you
have.
You should
therefore sympathize with the following cynical look at our educational
system, appropriately titled ...
The Essay Throughout Your Life
GRADE SCHOOL
You're given a
sheet of specifications: style guidelines for the Five-Paragraph Essay.
Grammar and spelling are thoroughly emphasized.
The teacher
never notices whether your project actually has any content; what's
important is that you follow instructions to the letter. After all, the
Five-Paragraph Essay prepares you for your future.
JUNIOR HIGH
You are told
to write a Five-Paragraph Essay on one topic from a book you're reading in
class, citing the book as a source. As the book was read in class and the
material was thoroughly discussed, everyone's paper turns out the same.
Students with good grammar and spelling get A's. Everyone else gets
C's.
HIGH SCHOOL
You are told
to write a Five-Paragraph Essay on a book you're supposed to be reading
for class. A topic is assigned for you. You end up reading just as much
of the book as necessary to answer the questions, and come up with all of
the supporting arguments you need off of the top of your head. Students
with good grammar and spelling get A's. Everyone else gets C's.
COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMS
"Write a
Five-Paragraph Essay on one of the following topics: (1) Which has made a
bigger difference in your life -- mozzarella cheese or hydrochloric acid?
(2) What letter of the alphabet is the most interesting and/or useful?
(3) If you could flip at random to any page in your World History
textbook, and look up a person who you could claim to us would be
interesting to talk to, who would it be?"
Everyone picks
topic #3. Papers are mailed to the college. Nobody ever looks at them,
and incoming students are picked half by random and half by Affirmative
Action and/or parental donations to the university.
COLLEGE, LOWERCLASSMAN
To your
supreme delight, there are no more Five-Paragraph Essays. To equal
regret, you find out this is because they've been replaced by
five-page essays, assigned on seemingly random topics just
closely related enough to the source material to make you read the entire
book in a panic.
The class
texts, of course, are unhelpful, and so you end up citing Friedrich
Nietzsche, the Book of Isaiah (King James Version), and two late-night
discussions with your hallmates. The grader doesn't actually have time to
read all 600 papers for content, so students with good grammar and
spelling get A's. Everyone else gets C's.
COLLEGE, UPPERCLASSMAN
In lecture,
the professor says: "Write eight to ten pages by Monday on one theme from
our discussions of the last three weeks."
You now know
that it does you no good to read the class texts, so you quote Nietzsche,
Sun-Tzu, last night's episode of "Seinfeld," and your professor's latest
novel (whether or not it has anything to do with your topic). The paper
ends up one solid page of quotes, one page of footnotes, one page of
bibliography, a cover page, and four pages of unjustifiable bullshit.
The TA (or
professor, if you're lucky) reads through the paper for content, and if
you're lucky you'll only be marked down half a grade because they disagree
with your position. The students with bad grammar and spelling get C
minuses. Those who write four drafts and run it through the spell-checker
get A minuses, but fail the rest of their classes.
GRADUATE SCHOOL
You're asked
to write 20 pages by the end of the quarter on whatever topic you've
happened to be herded into between your struggles with TAing and
late-night burger-flipping. There are no class texts, so you quote
Nietzsche, Plato, St. Athanasius, William Blake, and two of the
lower-division student essays you're reading as a TA. The paper ends up
eight solid pages of quotes and twelve pages of unjustifiable
bullshit.
The professor
makes illegible comments in the margin. If your topic has any relevance
to the world at large, he finds and takes the opposing viewpoint -- so you
rewrite the essay until he can no longer disagree. The title ends up
looking like "A Commentary on Interpersonal Psychometry in 20th Century
Baltic Studies: Digital Stalinism Meets Dystopian Realism."
Everybody gets
A's, but it isn't worth the work.
DOCTORATE THESIS
You're told to
make it at least 30 pages, with a thorough bibliography, page numbers,
twelve-point double-spaced Helvetica Oblique type, a nicely bound cover,
and a partridge in a pear tree.
If one comma
is out of place, you fail (and hire a proofreader to pick through the
essay for next time). If you're stupid enough to let content sneak into
the paper, you fail. If you're not prepared to defend that lack of
content to the review board, you fail. If you cannot defend that lack of
content with enough buzzwords, you fail. If you show any emotion, you
fail. If you do anything but fail, you fail.
If your
writing is sufficiently obfuscatory to sidestep even this last barrier,
then you pass. The school library's copy of the thesis subsequently gets
stolen by local Satanists to be read aloud during a midnight sacrifice to
Vter'Xonius, the Inscrutable One.
OUT IN THE REAL WORLD
You're given a
sheet of specifications. Grammar and spelling are thoroughly emphasized.
The boss never notices whether your project actually has any content;
what's important is that you follow instructions to the letter.
And you find
out that, after all, the Five-Paragraph Essay did prepare you for your
future.
