Logical Reasoning

PT8 · S4 · Q8 The director of a secondary

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The director of a secondary school where many students were having severe academic problems impaneled a committee to study the matter.

Conclusion

Refraining from sports will guarantee that these students do well academically.

Evidence

The committee said these students were having academic problems because they spent large amounts of time on sports and too little time studying.

Evaluate

This seems more like a "argue the anti-conclusion" argument then a "search for missing links" one. The main evidence is a committee's report, so we could have practical concerns about how trustworthy that data is.

The harshness of the conclusion should stick out to us.

It's easy to defeat that conclusion with just one counterexample. Can we think of a story where a student stops spending large amounts of time on sports but still doesn't do well academically?

Sure -- maybe now that they have time to study, they find out they have a learning disability that makes it hard to do well academically. Maybe now that they have hours in the week free from sports, they spend it on TikTok or guitar or hiking, but still not on studying.

Goal

Let's look for an answer saying, "We're assuming the committee's report is accurate/trustworthy" or one ruling out a storyline where students still don't do well academically, even though they now have more time available to study.

8.

The reasoning on which the director bases his statement is not sound because he fails to establish that

  1. some students who spend time

    Irrelevant Quality

    This is enticingly weak wording, but do we care whether all sports kids have academic problems vs. whether many do but some don't? The argument is only talking about students who DO have academic problems while playing sports, so whether that's all sports kids or just a subset of sports kids, it doesn't matter.

    7% picked this

  2. all students who do well

    Too Strong: all Reversal

    The author is saying "with time saved by not participating in sports" I guarantee you that these students will "do well academically". But this answer says "if a student is doing well academically" I guarantee you that the student got there because the cut sports out of their live to save time. The author doesn't need all academically successful students to be ex-athletes, which is what this answer is saying.

    10% picked this

  3. Correct

    at least some of the

    Why this is right

    This is also enticingly weak. Is the author thinking that students will stop playing sports, which will free up time in their life, and then they'll use some of that extra time to study? Of course! That's the whole plan. The director heard that they were struggling because they spent too much time on sports and not enough on studying, so she is canceling their sports so that they can re-allocate that time to studying. If we negated this, it would certainly weaken: None of the time the students save by quitting sports will be spent working on their academic problems.

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

    77% picked this

  4. no students who do well

    Too Strong: no

    The author doesn't have to think that every athlete struggles academically. The first sentence says at this school "many students are athletes who struggle academically". That's who this argument is directed towards. It doesn't hurt the argument if there is a student who spends time on sports and does well academically.

    5% picked this

  5. the quality of the school’s

    Irrelevant Causality

    This is lovable because of the Defender-esque "not" in it. We should negate and see if it weakens: The quality of the sports program WILL suffer as a result of this ban. Does that weaken the idea that "the students will do well academically"? No. They're two separate things. The fact that the sports program is suffering doesn't tell us anything about whether or not the students would be doing well academically.

    1% picked this

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