Physical education should teach

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct73% picked this

   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.

   73%
2. B

   Too Strong: “most”11% picked this

   Competition causes most students to turn away

   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%
3. C

   Out of Scope: talented at competitive7% picked this

   People who are talented at competitive physical endeavors

   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%
4. D

   Too Strong: just as important8% picked this

   The mental aspects of exercise are as important as the

   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%
5. E

   Out of Scope2% picked this

   Children should be taught the dangers of a

   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%