Wild Lunatic Meandering

["Jeanne H. Simpson" <csjhs@ux1.cts.eiu.edu>]

Friends

This thread about the 5-paragraph theme has certainly elicited some
vigorous discussion.  I reacted especially to the notion that the
relative ineffectiveness of this format as an instructional method is 
definitively proved by research.  Even though I myself wouldn't teach this
form deliberately unless I had a very specific reason. 

But meanwhile, I have been reading an enthralling book, Jared Diamond's
*Guns, Germs, and Steel.* And Diamond's book has got me to thinking.
Herewith some wild explorations.

Diamond wants to explore the question of why some societies developed
advanced technologies faster, more completely, or simply instead of not
developing them. He poses the question rather closely: why was it that
Pizarro came to Peru in the 16th century and conquered Atahualpa and the
Inca empire?  Why didn't events occur the other way about, with Atahualpa
crossing the Atlantic from west to east and landing in Spain and taking
Charles V prisoner?  The book is an exploration of what variables might
affect a specific outcome. 

And that is what makes me want to see more research about the relative
ineffectiveness of the 5 paragraph essay as an instructional technique. 
Have we really examined all the variables and done the kind of thorough
research that would eliminate some as causes?  We know that the number of
variables that occur in the writing process is enormous, and we also know
that we know precious little about some of them, such as how the brain
processes written language. Oh some--but not enough.  

I wonder, just thinking idly, why it is that we have had a great many
world-class rhetoricians who benefitted (some might say surivved and
overcame, but we cannot be certain of that) from educational processes
that hardly resemble anything we do in a late 20th century writing
center. What effect was there, for example, from writing with hand
sharpened pencils and quills on paper that was costly?  I don't mean the
limitations of class that are well documented, but on how people learn? If
revision is both physically and financially difficult, what happens?  What
effect does the greater extent of light we now all enjoy have on the
learning process?  We know that it has had measurable developmental
effects, shortening the time to menarche in young women, for instance, by
almost 2 full years in only 4 or 5 generations.  I recall the
controversial piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education wherein a
professor measured his class outcomes on the basis of how much he smiled
and joked around in class. He wryly noted that his student evaluations
jumped upward, though he changed nothing else (that he was aware of )in
his classes.  Is the failure of the 5-paragraph theme based in its rigidty
or is it really in the rigidity of instructors who impose it without
benefit of smiles and jokes?

I wonder what variables we simply don't see but which are crucial. Diamond
offers a delightful concept, what he calls the Anna Karenina principle. 
This is based on the famous first line of Tolstoy's novel, that all happy
families are happy the same way, but each unhappy family is unique.  His
point is that for domestication of plants or animals to occur, a whole set
of variables have to fall into place, every time.    Thus, the successful
combination of human culture and plant or animal species requires that all
the factors work--just as in happy families.  A failure may be caused by
the absence of or slight variation of any single variable. The problem is
to identify it. I think that we must be very careful to apply the Anna
Karenina principle to the teaching of writing--each failure may be unique,
requiring careful analysis.  And we do not yet have a good grip on the
suite of variables that lead to uniform success either.  

Jeanne Simpson
csjhs@eiu.edu