Essays: the subtle art of suppression

Within academia, essays are the standard form of representation for ideas, concepts, or opinions and a key metric we use to evaluate communication skills, critical thinking, or intellectual competence. From middle school, students are taught to write within the strict confines of the conventions, and from then on, much of their academic life depends on their ability to skilfully compose in the format. As they progress, teachers expect essays of increasing lengths to be handed in, and when the time comes, those applying for university are once again required to share their thoughts in the same, constraining format. Despite academia’s love of essays, however, I’d argue that academia’s heavy dependence on essays is harmful and contradicts the very values that academia seems to so vehemently value.

Of course, I understand that the situation is not as simple as just removing essays from the curriculum, but hear me out…

The Prologue

In our world today, schools and universities boast about encouraging students to innovate and enabling students to utilize their creativity to become problem solvers. Many universities only accept the top students that they believe are unique in a way that would allow them to become innovators like the world has never seen before. What does this mean? Everyone can do well in school if they put the effort in, so what sets someone apart from the crowd? Spoiler alert: it’s not the good grades or the effort put into the academics. It’s the original thinking. The willingness to challenge assumptions, and the courage to pursue unconventional ideas. It’s not about being able to follow instructions, or being able to learn everything fast. It’s about seeing problems differently and creating solutions that others haven’t considered.

In a crowd full of people, it’s the intangible qualities that distinguish you from others. Your character, or your ability to innovate and imagine. These are things that should be held onto dearly, because even though everyone is born with these, many grow out of them. But in order to hold on, sometimes we need to let go: the academic world simply has just relied on essays for far too long.

Chapter I - Essays, the subtle art of suppression

No matter how essays may be framed in the academic world, here’s the truth: the strict writing style and mode of thinking that essays teach completely strips out creativity. Let’s be clear though, I’m not arguing that the thinking that essays teach is inherently harmful. Take donuts, for example. Eating a donut once in a while is fine, but eating it every day is unhealthy. The same goes for essays. Our over-dependence on essays molds students into the exact opposite of what we want: creative problem-solvers. Like I mentioned previously, essays teach clarity and organization, but force any form of creative expression out of the equation. Over time, students get conditioned into the monotone form of thinking, and slowly, as they progress throughout their academic years, their childhood creativity slowly diminishes.

Although creativity may seem like a small thing, it’s a fundamental part of our identity. Pre-upper-school, everyone learns more or less the same things: mathematics, sciences, or even that Pluto was ‘abandoned’ by humankind. Without creativity, our problem-solving approaches would be the same, shaped only by our shared knowledge and experiences. So, in the end, it’s creativity that enables us to think differently and come up with solutions that no one has ever thought of to try before. These are the types of thinkers that we want in our world. Education shouldn’t be a factory, churning out robots programmed with the same information. Education should be a way to take our creativity to new levels by enabling students to use creativity with knowledge hand-in-hand. This is what will truly help humanity progress.

Chapter II - NUANCE EXISTS!!!

There are other problems that come with relying so much on essays when making decisions in the academic world. For example, while universities can use a student’s achievements to infer aspects of their personality, this only reveals so much. Without the nuances that other forms of writing can provide, it becomes harder to fully understand who someone is. Not only this, universities look beyond the individual and at the whole class as well in an effort to build a well-rounded class with diverse personalities. However, relying solely on achievements and an application essay offers limited insight into an applicant’s character.

Additionally, allowing other forms of expression comes with benefits. By asking applicants to pick a form that they think best allows them to express themselves, you force them to dive deeper into who they are as a person, and what message they want to send. It is not merely enough to ask applicants who they see themselves as a person: true expression and exploration of oneself requires a certain level of freedom that essays just cannot offer.

The Epilogue

Of course, essays do have things that they are really good at doing. For example, you would expect a scientific report to be in a form that is structured to ensure easy readability. However, expecting this for every single piece of writing does nothing but train all people to think the same, when in reality, careers and universities tend to want people who think differently because of the value that they can bring. Ten people that bring different ideas is often better than ten that bring the same. Thus, it makes no sense that we require students to constantly compose in the same, strict writing style that many have come to hate.