The Shelf Life of the FPT

For this week's reading I found the Wesley and the Wiley articles to be the most useful and stimulating. While the other four writers provided some good insights and reasoning in explaining their views on the five paragraph essay or theme, I thought that Wesley and Wiley were very convincing in their comments. For example, I first read Nunnally who posited that while the FPT may teach students unity, coherence, and development of their ideas, it is a constraining form that does not encourage much growth. Furthermore, at the end of his essay he says that while secondary teachers should seek to teach beyond the FPT he would rather have incoming college students know its form and advantages rather than having them come to college clueless about how to write a well organized paper. Wesley actually calls Nunnally out on this when she says that such a frame of mind only encourages the status quo. In other words, encouraging teachers to go beyond the FPT and then saying that it is probably ok if students don't know much beyond the FPT, as long as they know the FPT inside and out, is dangerous. Wesley calls for a break from the format of the FPT which limits the potential of students' writing. She says that by teaching kids to break from the form you are teaching them to voice their concerns, communicate, and think for themselves. I find this very helpful because, after all, aren't these the real world applications that we want students to have? Sticking to a form makes the acquisition of these skills very difficult.

Wiley, echoes these sentiments as he suggests that we first teach kids the formula, and then allow kids to deviate from that formula as they see fit. Wiley says that formulaic writing serves a purpose in the sense that it allows low achieving and struggling students a place to begin when faced with a blank page. It provides a guide for how general writing should look to those who don't really know how to go about producing this type of writing. However, formulaic writing "stiffles ongoing exploration, and encourages premature closure of complicated issues." Thus, in order to get higher level thinking from our students we must encourage them to move beyond a form and explore their own ideas and discoveries. I personally agree strongly with these statements. Once we give kids a starting point for writing it is up to us to encourage them to take their writing as far as it may go. This means breaking the constrictive form of the FPT. After all, how much can really be said in five paragraphs, and after a certain point how good can that writing really get. The FPT has a shelf life for students. Once they have opened the container the FPT tends to spoil very quickly, as they find other ingredients with which to write.

Here is a website with some helpful teaching suggests for how to begin to move beyond the conventional five paragraph essay. Although the suggestions represent small steps, this site provides a starting point for doing more with the FPT.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/beyond.html