8 Things We Learn About Writing in School That We Don’t Use in The Real World
And how we can improve our writing for life
We sometimes take our first world educations for granted. If you are reading this article, you probably went to a decent school compared to what other poorer nations around the world offer.
The school system isn’t perfect. And most people can come up with at least three reasons why the American school system isn’t as good as other countries and things like that.
But I’m not here to criticize the school system. There are some flaws, and until new learning technologies are developed, teachers don’t have the time or resources to cater to the exact learning demands of every single student.
And school is a beautiful thing. It is an exciting time to socialize, learn, test our abilities, and take time away from home.
We hear often enough that “school doesn’t prepare people for life.” While I would agree with that statement to an extent, not having the school system and letting kids all run free to “find themselves” is not much of a solution either.
But what does that mean, and who do those comments come from? Are they coming from angry senior executives who are finding tremendous competition from smart fresh out of school youngsters? Are they coming from students who knew how to work the school system for 13+ years, but couldn’t figure out how to work the corporate or life system?
I’m not placing judgment here. It could be from anyone, and it probably has some truth. But what I think could be more valuable, is focusing in on the specifics of what school doesn’t prepare us for as it relates to writing.
And maybe schools have updated their ways since I was in many years ago. But these are things I haven’t seen taught in school vs. what commands high prices in the real world — given that I chose not to specialize in the area of writing when I was in school.
And here’s the first major, obvious one to start…
Structure
Schools teach a traditional structure. They suggest five sentences and ten words per paragraph. They also supply the framework of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. For fiction, we learn about the hero’s journey.
And this is the general structure until we move into the upper grades where we learn about writing research papers. Eventually, more expectations force us to expand our essays to more pages, which consists of more body paragraphs. Sure, grammar and spelling are important and all that too.
These are essential foundations for writing and a great place to start.
But what’s valuable in the real world?
Outside of having an introduction and conclusion, I’ve seen very few successful writers or popular articles follow the original school system all the way through on their best works. Listicles are popular despite people complaining that there are too many listicles. But I don’t think you’ll find many school papers that are listicles. And for a good reason. But listicles work in the real world.
So, if you look at popular books, there is a definite structure, but there is more intention under the structure.
Let’s use GRRM or George R.R. Martin’s work in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. Every chapter follows the same pattern. This is not a criticism. It is evaluating a successful writer’s primary formula.
Every chapter takes on the point of view of another character. It takes that character’s point of view and builds a story around it and reveals a bit about the character’s story. Then at the end of every chapter, it doesn’t conclude with a conclusion.
The end of every chapter concludes with a cliffhanger.
We don’t get taught much in school about the importance of writing a solid cliffhanger. It is of huge importance when writing for television, fiction, and more… Yet we don’t get trained to do it.
Maybe it’s because the essay graders would probably be annoyed by it and call the work incomplete. But one thing they do train us to do well in school, which isn’t always very helpful is…
Argument
In school, they call it persuasive writing or combining ethos, pathos, and logos to create a compelling essay that proves our point. When it’s time to write an essay in school, teachers check your spelling and grammar, the structure, and also your ability to convince the audience on what you are talking about.
Sometimes this is done to see if you read the book, and other times it’s probably done to see if you can create an argument.
All immensely helpful if you’re going to become someone who crafts arguments, but not necessarily if you are responsible for presenting them.
But even in science, arguing is not as valuable as being able to see the faults in your research, and being able to develop future experiments off them.
Let’s use an example.
Think of a typical essay topic in school.
They might sound something like:
Read this story and explain why Johnny running away from home is a symbol of freedom. Use quotes from the story to support your explanation. Or…
Pick a character from a famous novel and explain their character traits and how their flaws ended up becoming strengths. Use support from the story.
Regardless of what the essay is, it is usually “convince me.” But rarely is it ever, “make the idea sound so juicy, that I would pay you to tell me what it is.”
But the real world demands that type of writing from advertisers. In advertising, you don’t learn to create an essay debating the customer and arguing all the points. They teach you to learn about the customer and speak to them, entice them, and get them interested in your product through how it fills their needs.
Research articles and arguing is useful for scientists and lawyers. Analysis of symbols in books are good for literary analysis. But those don’t always carry over to distinguished career skills outside of thinking purely logically.
And here’s an important skill you hear almost nothing about in school.
Lack of Selling
Sales is one of the most important activities in economics. Production, marketing, human resources management, administration is all significant. Yet when I went to school, there was never anything that taught sales. And yes, sales can be learned.
And sales isn’t just putting on a nice suit and tie and chatting up customers to tell them about your product. It can also be done through computers, copywriting, and persuasive writing, but not the same persuasive writing we learn in schools.
You don’t learn to ask for the order in school (except if you’re doing fundraisers — but we’re talking specifically about writing skills), but you’ll learn to repeat your supporting ideas in the conclusion in a new way.
You don’t learn to write a compelling headline to capture people’s attention in school, but you’ll learn to make your exact point with every sentence. While getting to the point is important in many situations, when it comes to sales, there are those out there who expect to be seduced. Wined and dined even.
In school we learn to create and support an argument or idea, but we’re rarely taught how to consider what the reader is thinking.
Teachers might touch on the surface saying things like “the person grading your essay has already probably done 50 essays, so you should take a shot at saying something they’ve never heard before.” But they don’t give you the exercises to train that.
The lessons in school are valuable, without a doubt. But the exact skills used in the role world are often missed opportunities. And for those of us adult writers, the sooner we become aware of what we can improve based on habits we built, the faster we can improve.
And this next topic is constantly pressed into our heads by many advertisers, writing coaches, copywriters, authors, and more…
Titles Instead of Headlines
Pick up any book on writing or advertising, and I’d bet they mention something about a headline. If not a headline as in a title for an ad, then a compelling “hook” somewhere in the title or first few sentences.
But no one reads the first few sentences if the headline doesn’t grab them.
In school, teachers and standardized score essay graders are forced to read our essays, whether they like it or not. Imagine if this was flipped, and a teacher was allowed to say “I have absolutely zero interest in what your essay has to say because your title sucks” and give the essay an automatic re-do.
That’s what real life is like!
You spend hours, days, or months thinking about an idea, and then you finally put pen to paper, complete it, and publish it. And after waiting and waiting, no one sees it nor cares about it. Not even your teacher. Not even a hater.
Getting negative feedback from a teacher is dozens of times more valuable than hearing crickets. And a lot of times, it might go straight to the headline.
In the real world, no one cares about your poem The Squirrel Runs at Night. Unless you have a talented team of people and an excellent reputation that helps you spread the idea. But a teacher might have to read it if it is for an assignment.
But until then, you will have to learn how to write a well thought out headline or title for your article. This is even excluding the fact that I don’t know if the schools currently teach SEO.
Imagine a teacher trying to explain the search engine science behind how the title 53 Tactics on How to Get More Followers on Instagram might get views compared to 53 Ways to Get More Instagram Followers. And why those might get more views than The Symbols of Greed in Atlas Shrugged.
And here’s something that gets overused in the real world but seems to be popular amongst certain influencers.
Line Spacing vs White Space
Now, this is somewhat of a new concept, so we can’t blame the school system for not addressing this. Earlier, we talked about structure and how every paragraph is about five sentences with ten words per sentence.
But if you look at a lot of modern books, and internet writing styles, you’ll notice something different.
Depending on the author, some authors will write large chunks of text, while others will create a two-sentence paragraph, then skip a line, write one sentence, then skip another line, and then continue like that.
I am not saying what is the right or wrong way to practice. But in school, outside of writing for poetry, we hardly learn about structuring our sentences to be pleasant to the eye.
And it can be overused, especially on specific social media platforms, where people skip a line after every single sentence while trying to write new posts.
But here’s the flaw. When we hear about whitespace, it is as if it is some magic key that makes people suddenly read all of our words because they are spaced out nicely. But the fact is, people don’t just read it because it’s spaced out nicely, they read it because it is appealing to the eye.
And if you overuse whitespace, that can also be annoying to the eye. So, by learning one way or the other as opposed to learning how to apply the ideas effectively, we can make mistakes in both areas.
The five-sentence ten-word structure is a good safe bet, but it is not the only effective way to write. And a combination of different page sizes and more plus the audience can determine how you format your paragraphs. And I would say modern tastes push us toward more white space in our writing.
When it comes to this next concept, schools tend to miss the mark…
Knowing the Audience
I remember touching on this idea a little bit in speech class. They scratch the surface in telling you to imagine who you are writing to when you are speaking. But 100% of the time, the presentation was to other students, teachers, and maybe parents, at least for me.
There are some extracurricular activities that allow you to speak to a bigger audience.
But the concept of knowing an audience can be difficult to drill down for a teacher because it focuses on how to “write convincingly” to a specific group of people, as opposed to what you really need to know to understand your audience.
Let’s take, for example, a research paper. Most people write research papers for other researchers, scholars, experts, and educators. This style of writing can be helpful in corporate. And of course, you learn different models of writing depending on what business you go into such as how a journalist will write differently than a scientist.
And maybe the purpose of schools is not to help you specialize in one specific type of writing…
But while we are told in in school to make our writing appeal to our audience, we don’t ever really learn specifically how.
I learned how to break down an audience and consider what their life is like. I even did an exercise where I read old stories and had to evaluate what was going on with the general population during the time that story was written. Valuable foundational stuff, but it doesn’t dive deep to knowing your audience.
School teaches you to ask questions like:
What is the age group of people you are writing to?
What was the social climate during the time the story was written?
What kind of vocabulary would your audience use?
But understanding your audience might be more useful if you ask questions like:
What is it the person you are writing to deeply desires?
What might be their biggest pain?
What do you need to write to get and keep their attention?
As mentioned earlier, in school, we automatically have an audience of other students, and rarely need to learn the writing skills to build one. Other students are natural at writing compellingly. But what about those who aren’t?
So, knowing your audience, as it relates to articles and business, goes much deeper than just demographics and the type of vocabulary to use or what topics to address. It goes into considering what they know or don’t know, their objections or concerns, and their feelings on your ideas.
And this next concept can keep people from finding their voices…
Formality
Example:
Dear Mr. or Mrs., I am very polite in the way I write because I am consistently writing to teachers and other researchers. Twelve or more years were spent writing in this professional, formal, and astute manner. I am expected to write a certain way, and you can tell that through my writing. I would like to inform you that my writing is not at all how I write in business or regular life. In fact, most people wish I tightened up my message or did not get all sappy about it. Sincerely, Yours Truly, Emmett.
I can’t remember the last time I called someone Mr. or Mrs. and they didn’t say something like “don’t call me that, it makes me sound so old!” Sure, its’ important to “get permission” first to determine how you should approach the situation especially in professional settings. But even outside of formality, the studious and formal tones we use in school writing is hardly the communication style that allows careers to flourish.
Maybe it is helpful when you’re fresh out of high school, and you’re reaching out to high-level local politicians. They’ll find it cute. But after a while being in professional environments, it starts to feel weird.
Now there is something to be said about politeness and formality, since it may be the lowest risk way to address as many people as possible without offending anyone. And schools just keep the tradition of saying Mr. and Mrs. so teachers can establish structure.
But the studious way of writing we use to convince teachers or essay readers of our ideas quickly goes out the window during your first job.
And finally (but not least) …
Close the Deal
We mentioned sales earlier, but “selling our idea” is different from closing on the idea. Closing the deal is mostly relevant to those doing copywriting who have a product to pitch.
In school, we deliver a presentation or share our work with classmates who may or may not give us feedback. Peers don’t judge on whether they agree with your statements or not. They grade based on criteria like “did they use supporting arguments” or “does their sentence make sense?”
We have an automatic audience that we don’t need them to buy our idea. We just need to come up with enough of an argument to get them to at least consider or believe it.
Our ability to entertain or influence comes down to a grade. But not necessarily our ability to get someone to want to pay money for our ideas.
School is excellent for writing listicles and articles like this one. You start with an introduction, have a bunch of sections and support each section, and then you conclude. If you provide good enough support, people will either agree or disagree (but the value exchanged is one sided where one side puts in all the work and presents the information, while the other side just absorbs it). Jobs like research depend on your ability to evaluate and present. However, there are many roles out there, such as in marketing, sales, and financing where you must develop the skill of sealing the deal through writing or speech.
But we don’t learn to analyze and understand what might hold back a person reading our paper from buying into what we have to offer. And that can make a massive difference between someone who thrives off their writing vs. someone who is trying to stand out in the sea of SEO driven listicles (such as what I happen to be doing in this article — making a fancy listicle).
