I wish I could vote this comment up 100 times. I feel like the writing taught in high school set me back 10 years; it took sustained contact with actual literature while in college just to recover somewhat.

A finer point: the five-paragraph essay that was popular -- no, required -- in my 90s-era American high school is a great format for creating forgettable text. It's a succinct recipe for making an outline slower to read. Thankfully, we have ChatGPT for that now. But still, real writing can aspire to something more visceral, or raw, real, or just damned interesting.

(For the record, I had excellent English teachers... but the tyranny of the prescribed essay spares no one. No slights, Mr(s). Neely, Vosovic, Dewar, and Green!)