Logical Reasoning

PT107 · S4 · Q3 Physical education should teach

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Physical education should teach people to pursue healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older.

Statements

Plan / Recommendation / Goal: "should"

Phys ed has the goal of making people live active/healthy lives when they get older.

Causal Claims

BUT focus on competitive sports causes most of the less sporty kids to turn away from sports.

Learning to think of oneself as unathletic causes one to not exercise enough to stay healthy.

If we have multiple causal claims, we want to think about whether they chain together. Here, it seems like they do.

Most schools the less think of don't focus on ⇢ compet. ⇢ themselves ⇢ exercise competitive kids turn as to stay sports away unathletic healthy

When we relate this to the first sentence about the goal of Phys Ed, the overlapping idea is whether or not people are moving towards active/healthy lifestyles as adults.

Phys ed has the goal of making people live active/healthy lives when they get older, but its focus on competitive sports is leading to the opposite for some students.

Goal

Look for something like

3.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the statements above, if they are true?

  1. Correct

    Physical education should include noncompetitive

    Why this is right

    This is definitely going one-step-further than our actual inference (Phys Ed's focus on competitive sports is undermining its long-term goals for some students). This would not be a correct answer on Must Be True, but it's pretty supportable in this Most Supported context. Since Phys Ed wants to create adults with healthy/active lifestyles, but competitive sports put some people on a trajectory to be insufficiently active / unhealthy, then it would make sense to include noncompetitive activities in the hopes of giving those people a better option.

    Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    72% picked this

  2. Competition causes most students to

    Too Strong: “most”

    Competition turns most of the less competitive students to turn away from sports. The less competitive students might only refer to 20% of the students, and so most of them could be as little as 11% of students. Meanwhile, this answer is saying that at least 51% of students are turned away. We should be wary of answers that seem too much like they're just reiterating one fact we were told. The correct answer is usually combining more than one claim.

    11% picked this

  3. People who are talented at

    Out of Scope: talented at competitive

    We don't have any information about people who are talented at competitive physical endeavors. Previously we were only discussing students who were or weren't competitive. That's different from whether or not someone is talented at competitive sports. Since we have no information about people who are talented at competitive endeavors, we can't support whether or not they exercise regularly.

    7% picked this

  4. The mental aspects of exercise

    Too Strong: just as important

    We can infer from this paragraph that there are some mental aspects to exercise (since “having learned to think of themselves as unathletic” is a mental aspect that has an effect on whether people exercise). But we can't precisely compare its importance to the physical aspects of exercise.

    8% picked this

  5. Children should be taught the

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: the dangers of sedentary We don't actually ever talk about what the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle are. Although this is similar in gist to choice (A) (the current plan backfires, so we should try something different), we have less support for this specific recommendation than we do for (A)'s more generic recommendation. (A) was just saying we should do things besides the broken thing (competitive sports). (E) gets real specific about what the other thing should be, but the author never talked about education about sedentary lifestyles. One way we know that (A) is better than (E) is that if (E) were true, then it would imply that (A) is also true. If we're saying that physical education should teach kids the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle (teaching them is a noncompetitive activity), then we're also saying that physical education should include noncompetitive activities. There can't be two correct answers, so if one answer would imply the truth of a second answer, the first answer cannot be right.

    2% picked this

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