Cookbook Essays

Although many educators and writers will not agree with this approach, the use of "cookbook" templates may be a better initial approach for many students. The key point here is "initial" approach. When great painters took on students, they would all go to a location and all would paint the same subject matter. The students of the "master" were required to follow the rules imposed by the master painter and only after they had proven their skill by the "master's" rules were they allowed to branch into their own specific interpretation of the subject matter.

In the past long apprentice programs were the way students moved from apprenticeships into a trade. Even today long and short apprenticeships are still part of our system of training, but many apprenticeships are either no longer available or very limited. For example: you don't need many people trained to "shoe" horses these days, but they are still needed.

It might seem that apprenticeships and cookbook templates have little in common, but you can visualize the trainer as a person that supplies the template upon which the student learns. We are often taught how to write appropriate sentences, to write paragraphs, to write several cohesive paragraphs, but we seldom actually "copy" or "emulate" great or appropriate style. We tend to give students a topic and for the most part set them free.

As a computer teacher that sometimes administered computerized testing of teachers that wanted to become administrators, I was impressed by the great diversity in what they produced. They often did not actually address the topic, did not use correct grammar, spelling, or style, did not follow the rules of word count, and used poor examples. They were asked to write on topics such as: "What was one instance where you were successful in solving a difficult student conduct problem?".

Students today are asked to write essays as part of graduation or college entrance exams and they also have the same problems with their essays. This problem is not limited to the students we teach, but if the teachers do not follow the rules we must ask how effective they can be at teaching students to write appropriately.

When anyone writes "off the cuff" they have a tendency to get off topic and make mistakes. We can get a sense of this problem when we write and start to use a word which we are not absolutely certain of how to spell. What will most likely do is to rewrite and use a different word. This is only an indicator of the bigger problem. Sometimes we think we are such a great writer that even should the essay rules say to write 100 words or less, we sometimes think a few extra words will not matter. In fact some teachers and students definitely go by the rule "more is better".

More is "Not Better" in most cases. If you are trying to become an administrator and the essay requires 250 words or less, then if you type 251 words, you have not only not followed the rules, but you have PROVED you do not follow rules. If you are a student and you are writing an essay for a scholarship and you did this you would be no longer eligible for the scholarship, because it would be completely unfair to allow you to have a longer essay than others who have completely followed the rules. More was better for J. K. Rowling who was able to publish a longer book than was though acceptable.

Perhaps, we might rethink our approach to learning to write, imagine that students were more considered like an "apprentice" and that they would be required to produce an "exact" copy of a paragraph and then only allowed in a new version to change adjectives and in another version to change nouns and in another version to change only verbs etc. By learning to copy a "master" essay and change very little, they focus on smaller elements. They become a bit like the apprentice painter learning from the master. Gradually the student would be encouraged to make more and more changes until the "template" becomes significantly their own.

Some book companies already use "template" formats. If you were to write romance novels you would have to follow the publisher's rules for the kind of book they want. There is less actual template format with such publishers, but there are still quite specific rules. What has happened in part is the fierce independence of creativity that dominates American culture has in a sense caused us to dislike template approaches. The problem is that if every college entrance exam essay followed a strict template approach, they would literally all sound the same and then it may become difficult to evaluate them. Essentially writing from a template format must then be followed by training on moving into "individuality".

This is an exciting approach, because it leads toward rock solid individuality based upon an extremely strong foundation of knowledge. What we need are examples of typical essay topics, excellent essay responses and the rules that must be applied after which we need "practice", a lot of practice. I would love to be the apprentice of great writers and would want to follow the rules and then learn to break the rules appropriately.