That's kind of been the problem with it, actually. It's just the peers are terrible and the impact has been worse.
(Anecdata - in middle school, we were forced to write "essays" on a weekly basis and they were hell and most of us wrote bullshit, so to me, "essay" is some bullshit, lol)
(haha, yeah - eventually our trick became to write - and these were persuasive essays - one subject and the next week write the opposite: "New Textbooks Would Be Good"/"New Textbooks Would Be Bad", but of course bullshit because we were in middle school.
I'm pretty sure I ended my middle school career with "Writing Persuasive Essays Every Week Is Bad" and this probably informs a lot of my public school experience, doesn't it?)
@kalloway (but just think of the early training it gave you for writing and also rolling your eyes at fannish meta shite lolololololooool ~)