标题: [求助]AA105--jj文章练习请批评指正 [打印本页] 作者: jackq 时间: 2006-3-24 10:43 标题: [求助]AA105--jj文章练习请批评指正 105. The following appeared as part of a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
“Bayview High School is considering whether to require all of its students to wear uniforms while at school. Students attending Acorn Valley Academy, a private school in town, earn higher grades on average than Bayview students and are more likely to go on to college. Moreover, Acorn Valley reports few instances of tardiness, absenteeism, or discipline problems. Since Acorn Valley requires its students to wear uniforms, Bayview High School would do well to follow suit and require its students to wear uniforms as well.”
In this argument, the author concludes that Bayview High School should require all of its students to wear uniforms while at school. The author's line of reasoning is that because Acorn Valley Academy gained better education results while asking students to wear uniforms, Bayview should follow in the same way. The author based his reasoning on the following evidence: Students at Acorn Valley Academy earn higher average grades, and are more likely to go on to college; Reports of instance of tardiness, absenteeism or discipline problems are few; Students at Acorn are wearing school uniforms. Although the argument appears to be reasonable at the first glance, it suffers from several critical flaws that undermine the conclusion. I shall elaborate the main flaws of this argument respectively in the following paragraphs.
In the first place, the argument is based on an assumption that the Bayview High School and Acorn Valley Academy are analogous in all aspects. However, the analogy is highly doubtful, because no comparable aspects of the two schools are mentioned in the argument. Furthermore, no information about average academic abilities or discipline problems of students in two schools is compared. Such missing information could be crucial in determining the whether the outcomes, for example, average grades or discipline problems comes from uniform wearing. Without sufficient information to make the two schools analogous, the reasoning that based on the analogy is unwarranted.
In the second place, the argument suggest that a correlation proves causality, simply because the coexistence of school uniform wearing and better education outcomes. The assumption that the first fact is the reason for the second is problematic, because higher grades and less discipline problem in Acorn Valley Academy are very likely attributed to better academic resources such as a larger library, better educational facilities, and more experienced faculties. Meanwhile, school uniform wearing is just a coexisting phenomenon but contribute nothing education outcomes in Acorn. Without giving evidence to prove the causality between uniform wearing and better education results, the author’s consideration of the reason for better education outcome is unsupported.
Last but not least, granted that the author justified all the foregone assumptions, the evidence provided to support the author's reasoning is still insufficient to form a firm conclusion. To support his argument, the author only provides one high school as an example. The author failed to show more concrete evidence that a considerable number of high schools gain such result by requiring theirs students to ware school uniform. The insufficient evidence also makes the argument less convincing.
To sum up, the argument is not as persuasive as it stands. The author's reasoning fails to support his conclusion, making the argument lacks credibility. To buttress the argument, the author would have to provide more information regarding all comparable aspects of the two school to justify the analogy between them. Moreover, the author would have to established a causality be between school uniform wearing and higher student performance, and base his analysis on sufficient statistics to substantiate his argument.
作者: pumpkin 时间: 2006-3-27 10:46
I think it is well written.作者: jackq 时间: 2006-4-1 11:55