A recent Energy Audit conducted at Public School Zero found that the Five-Paragraph Essay makes a significant impact on the school’s overall carbon footprint. Designed to be redundant, the Five Paragraph Essay* encourages students to waste both paper and space on the internet composing unnecessary sentences which just explain the same thing over and over again. The common practice of encouraging multiple drafts when showing students how to write a Five Paragraph Essay takes even more energy. Printing out and searching for examples of Five Paragraph Essays is wasteful as well.
Teaching students how to write Five Paragraph essays is an act of war against the planet.
According to recent research reported in The Guardian, ‘A typical website produces 6.8 grams of carbon emissions every time a page loads… That’s roughly the same as the emissions produced when you boil an electric kettle for a cup of tea. If we can reduce the length of every Five Paragraph Essay by just one page, we can prevent a lot of pollution.
To cut down on emissions, Public School Zero has therefore pledged to reduce all Five Paragraph Essays to four paragraphs starting fall term 2021. By optimizing the structure of the Five-Paragraph Essay, PSZ hopes to improve not only its carbon footprint but its public image and is launching a large letter and email campaign to increase visibility of the effort. The essay cuts are just a first step toward a greener PSZ.
Over the next twenty years, PSZ hopes to reduce essay emissions to zero, and has pledged to eliminate all written words by 2041.
*For English teachers who think it should be “Five-Paragraph Essay,” you are wrong.