Since we’re getting more into pedagogy here... I think this falls into the category of learning the rules so you know which ones to break. Several years ago, I

Since we’re getting more into pedagogy here... I think this falls into the category of learning the rules so you know which ones to break. Several years ago, I was helping an underachieving high school student write a persuasive essay and she was helplessly lost. She didn’t know what the five-paragraph format was (intro, discussion point 1, discussion point 2, discussion point 3, conclusion). Without that, this was just a complete failure of an essay, or maybe an assignment never completed. If she had learned and practiced the 5th grade style that you learned, this persuasive essay in high school would have been a piece of cake. She’d be able to structure her thinking and communicate a point.