Logical Reasoning

PT140 · S3 · Q6 Many high school students

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Many high school students interested in journalism think of journalism careers as involving glamorous international news gathering.

Conclusion (thus)

High school career counselors should tell students who are interested in journalism what life is like for a typical reporter, that is a reporter for a local newspaper.

Evidence

Many high school students thinking of a career in journalism picture glamorous international news gathering, but most journalists cover primarily local news and work for local newspapers.

Evaluate

There's seems to be a mismatch between the career that prospective journalists envision and the career that eventual journalists end up with.

High schoolers picture themselves being Anderson Cooper or some gritty war correspondent in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people who graduate with these journalism degrees are going to just be covering the installation of new speed bumps near the mall for their local paper.

The conclusion introduces a brand new concept of what "career counselors should do", so we want the correct answer to be a principle that would guide the behavior of career counselors.

Since the conclusion is instructing the counselors to tell students what life is like for a typical reporter, we want this principle to tell the counselor it's their job to set the student straight.

Goal

Let's look for something like,

6.

Which one of the following principles would, if valid, most help to justify the reasoning above?

  1. High school students who have

    Bad Conclusion Match

    We are talking about high school students who have misconceptions about a career, but the conclusion isn't telling career counselors to talk them out of pursuing that career. The conclusion is saying that the career counselor should try to correct the students' misconception about what that career is typically like.

    7% picked this

  2. One should not encourage people

    Bad Evidence/Conclusion Match

    This rules is saying, If you want to maximize don't encourage people's chances to ? them to seek lead happy lives unattainable goals The trigger has no match in the argument, since we never established that career counselors are wishing to maximize their students' chances of leading happy lives. And the conclusion doesn't match. We're telling the counselors to provide students with a more accurate picture of what a journalism career would look like. This rule would say to the counselors, "Don't encourage them to seek a career in journalism".

    2% picked this

  3. Students who are choosing a

    Unrelated to Goal

    This is a principle about what students should do. We're trying to justify a conclusion about what career counselors should do, so this type of rule is useless to us.

    1% picked this

  4. Correct

    A career counselor should try

    Why this is right

    This and (E) are the only answers to specifically address career counselor's, which is appealing. We heard about students having an expectation / reality mismatch when it comes to careers in journalism. They're expecting glamorous international news gathering, but in the vast majority of cases they're going to cover local news for local papers. So we can say that students have an unrealistic conception. This rule says, If students have an career counselor unrealistic conception ? should disabuse about likely consequences them of that of choosing a certain career To "disabuse someone of notion X" is to convince them notion X is not really true. It's similar to clarifying a misconception. And that's a good match for what the conclusion is instructing career counselors to do.

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

    86% picked this

  5. Career counselors are not doing

    Bad Evidence Match Weak Conclusion Match

    This gives us a rule that says, If they encourage people career counselors to make career choices ? not doing their that start good but later jobs right turn regrettable Does the trigger match stuff we were told in the Evidence? No, the evidence didn't say anything about career counselors encouraging students to choose journalism. And it didn't say that journalism is initially appealing but later regretful. Does the outcome match the conclusion? No, the conclusion is that career counselors should provide info about a typical journalism career, not "therefore, they're doing their job wrong".

    5% picked this

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