Current Issue 
Is this a five-paragraph essay? A news article? An AP-style synthesis essay? Is my introduction paragraph a précis? Is my conclusion furthering my ideas? Am I varying sentence structure?
Is this the correct word length? Do I have a thesis? Am I clear? Topic sentences? Blended quotes? Analysis?
I used to flow. But after years of formal training, I now sit in front of a computer screen brimming with inhibitions and instructions that I have been numbly accepting for years. Maybe I’m a better writer for it. Maybe I’m far worse. Either way, it feels as if these writing guidelines are roadblocks between my mind and the blank page, further hindering my ability to express ideas. And despite the “clarity” of a five-paragraph essay and the convenience of a thesis, these tools result in a deterioration of communication, not an enhancement.
For every essay, every article, every homework assignment, my ideas are permanently trapped in a maze of form and structure, filtered through the canons of academic English. Is this writing? Endless evasion of structural faux pas and ambiguous theses? Inserting words into the blank spaces of appropriate outlines that I have been learning since the fifth grade?
To write is to express. Supposedly I’ve learned about paragraphs and rhetorical devices to help express ideas. But after meeting the structural criteria of every English teacher I have ever had, what’s left of my ideas? If I don’t think in introductions and topic sentences and conclusions, writing in this way can only create an opaque veneer over the untarnished expression of my ideas.
It is this creative expression that is often overlooked in education. It is the art of writing. This is writing for the sake of writing. It may not fit the rubric, it may not be clear. But ironically, it can communicate ideas far more effectively than the clear, structured method of the standard English class.
There is clear writing and there is genuine writing. Often they will overlap, but the purpose behind the writing is what distinguishes between the two forms. Only one form is taught in school. The result is an attempt to push sincere writing into the category of formatted writing, which in the process destroys the sincerity of genuine writing.
I am not suggesting the elimination of formal English teaching. Far from it, actually. I am suggesting a balance.
I have loved every English teacher of my high school experience. My frustration with controlled academic writing lies not with teachers or their methods but rather with the rubricated values that we have been instilled with. I have yet to be assigned an essay graded on honesty, a virtue that should be absolutely central to the process of writing.
Obviously it is imperative to learn the formats of academic writing too, if not solely for the sake of breaking them. In elementary school, sentence fragments were shunned. In AP Composition, they are a device. Every literary rule we learn can later be broken. But the danger is not having the ideas to break those formats when the time comes.
Beware: Formatted writing gives way to formatted thought.
Free writing cannot necessarily be taught, however it can be encouraged. At the very least education should give students the opportunity to explore the writing process outside of a template. Musicians learn scales and fingerings as tools to express ideas. Why is it then that writers are taught essay structures and sentence syntax as guidelines for expression of ideas, not devices for furthering them? Granted, the disciplines are different. But the idea of art is the same.
Sure, we “free write” in school. We often “free write” to brainstorm for an essay. We “free write” to practice the skill of writing. But when we are allowed to scribble unconditionally outside of the essay template, it is rarely graded or valued or viewed as anything but a means to improve formatted academic writing anyway.
Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of teaching solely academic writing that I have encountered is its endorsement of solely academic thought. The easiest way to become a “good writer” by English class standards is to, instead of forcing ideas into templates, force templates onto ideas.
In the competitive environment of AP essays and college admissions, it is too easy to perceive writing as an objective means to an end. A page of information. A template.
Forget the five-paragraph essay. Instead of pushing and squashing ideas into the mad-lib style outline formats of academic essays, writing can and should reflect the thoughts that form them.
