When it comes to writing an essay teachers often insist at least five sentence per paragraph in order to ensure that you have fully address the question, point or argument you are making in that paragraph. I find it hard to believe that anyone can make a valid argument, discuss a point, or explain an idea in three sentences.

Simply put, in order to write a well structured paragraph in an essay you need a variety of sentences or types of sentences. In your first sentence you state the main topic or idea to be discussed in the paragraph. In your second sentence you then elaborate on your idea/topic by applying critical thinking. You then provide evidence to support your idea/topic. In a comparative essay like your daughters this might several sentences as she provides quotes or examples from both novels. In your fourth sentence you analyse the evidence and tie it back to your topic. The last sentence is typically called a linking or conjoining sentence where you link the paragraph to the next paragraph.

So really when people say a 5 sentence paragraph they mean that you need to have at least 5 of these types sentences in order to write a well structured paragraph. Having a rule that students can apply to writing a paragraph helps them with structure and expressing their ideas clearly and in a logical fashion.

I do agree that the teacher was definitely wrong in taking sentences here and there from your daughters essay. It sounds like this teacher doesn’t know how to teach essay writing. How confusing for your daughter.

http://www.surveymagnet.com/2010/08/us-vs-other-countries-in-education/

Come join the discussion.

Other than that, a school system, focosung on fun, as ultimate goal, can never be successful.
The debate about cursive writing is ridiculous! Cursive writing is fine coordination of the brain, it is effort, concentration, focusing attempt. Also an esthetical value. A basic part of elementary education from age six!!! Block letters are not for writing. Competive Asian countries, like Japn, China, Korea do have complex writing systems, Japanese students have to learn two sets of phonetic ABC , the so called hiragana and katakana, and 880 characters during six years of basic education! Learning, memorizing, making mental efforts, retaining information expands the brain of young individuals, and does not harm them all!
US students are mortified if they have to retain bigger segments of information.
There is no music education at all, in Hungary and in other countries schools, and or classes specializd in music education from 1. grade elementary school / music classes every day for 8 years/ are better at all other subjects than students in non music specialized schools. It was composer and music educator Zoltan Kodaly, who approached the Ministry of education to implement this type of schools, adding also that ” music is sounding mathematics”, and he knew his buiness. There are schools specialized in mathematics for talented students, others are in sports again for talented students, not everybody is the same. Others do teach all subjects in a foreign language / English, German, Spanish, French/ during high school years. But the basics are the same for everybody, strong language, writing, descriptive grammar, history, geography,biology, music, art , drawing, hand crafts, physical education, physics , chemistry, foreign languages.
US schools do teach a fraction, at a very low level, not surprising that there is no competitiveness.

@52: There is an old Salvador Dali (or perhaps Picasso?) story, possibly apocryphal, wherein he was approached by a young and aspiring artist for comments on said artist’s work. The Great Man said “Come back to me when you can show me you can draw a straight line. Then I might believe there is meaning in your scribbles”.

Generally, on reading: I was fortunate; my mother insisted on placing her children on her lap with the story book in front of them for all bedtime stories, from the moment reading us a story became something to do. As a result we were all reading by age 3. By age 7 I was fitted with spectacles. I spent too many hours reading under the blankets by flashlight after lights out.

Later in life, in mid High School, I was rescued from the stultifying and impenetrable Classics as taught conventionally by an exchange teacher of English, who came from New York to teach us in the UK for a year, and who devoted our Friday periods to reading us chapters from “Of Mice and Men”. Not because it was required reading – far from it, it may even have been forbidden reading for the language – but simply because he enjoyed it, and communicated that more than anything to us.

In general. I think it was the knowledgeable and passionate teachers who made the real impact on my life. The ones who were allowed to construct their own syllabus, and tests, and graded us on whether what we created for our answers work whether or no we gave the expected answers, so long as we also did well in the O and A levels. Same in University. I would say that all the learning experiences that stayed with me were those accompanied by passion. The only rote learnings that did me any good were the regular morning chanting of the times tables from 1×1 to 20×20, from the age of 5 to 9. From those I have look-up tables embedded in my brain, even now nearly 60 years later, that are still useful in life.

My son learned his cursive in Switzerland: it looks like original writing from the middle ages (and not very neat writing at that). He now gets penalized for being unreadable (still a ‘straight ‘A’ student, but it gets harder each week!). I had suggested he include his ‘printed’ copy (to aid in their reading of his inestimable prose), but his teachers have stated that inclusion of anything ‘printed’ would result in downgrading. A fabulous catch 22!

The worst part is that this is not only for simple homework but for all submissions: in Honors Biology, in Math, and in every other class (including Lit).

Stupid! Especially when there are already more appropriate and extant responses to ‘copying’ than forcing kids into wasting additional hours writing (and formatting) papers longhand!

On Grammer and Rules

I had some pretty good writing teachers in high school and college. We never learned a “five sentence” rule. We were taught to start a new paragraph with a new thought or topic.

I also learned to dissect and structure sentences with all of those labels like gerund, participle, dangling participle, etc. I’ve forgotten all of it.

To me, the rules are only helpful when you understand why they are rules. The why is what sticks in your head and gives you the ability to use the principles elsewhere, bend or break the rules appropriately.

In art school, I was taught that you should learn and be competent in traditional approaches; still lifes, figure drawing, drafting, composition, etc. One of the reasons is that people who break the rules without learning traditional approaches tend to do so in a very predictable way (without knowing it). A good foundation in the basics and art history often leads people to a more nuanced, thoughtful approach. Of course this is not always true. There are brilliant outsider artists who never learned any of the art school basics.

I was a graphic designer for years. There are definitely certain paragraph lengths, line lengths and sentence length that are more legible for certain media. It’s always best not to blind the reader.

One thing I’ve found is reading is the best entry into writing. The more you reading, the more you will get an instinctive feel for what sounds right.

Cognitive dissonance overload.

This system is bolsrtered by school sports, which typically carry more weight than any other branch of academic endeavor, and which are even more structured than other learning, as we’re taught to fastidiously “execute” plays and follow the rules and adhere to the playbook.

“Our children are our most precious resource” has become a cliche, but the bottom line is that there are precious few resources put into the promotion of the joy of knowledge, of learning, of discovery, of understanding, of insight, of the power of good information.

You need a test and a license to drive a car, but all you need to get a kid is sex. After that, you can do whatever you want with it, including filling its head with mythical nonsense designed to trip up even the “system of edcuation” we suffer through at present.

I dunno. It may not be education education, but it sounds like good practical training for a job in any corporate/governmental entity.

What percentage of their day do you think a teacher would say they spend “appeasing …authorities by following arbitrary rules made up to fix minor problems”?

I did have one other thought: Despite possibly every generation complaining about the lousiness of the current generation’s crappy education, they do still seem to be Flynn Effecting* us out of existence.

We are doomed to be useless codgers. Better get your run in now boys and girls, you’ll be furniture before you know it. These new kids grew up on X-box and 4chan cheeseburger cats, they’re going to write the new rules. Better brush up on your lolgrammar.

*Yeah, there’s plenty of arguments to be made against the flynn effect.