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31) The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.
In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend—the city-run public schools—comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the budgetary priority they give to public education. For example, both as a proportion of its overall tax revenues and in absolute terms, Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City has for its public schools—even though both cities have about the same number of residents. Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In this letter, the author claims that Parson City residents pay more attention on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do. While it may be true that there are differences of degree in values on public education, the argument is based on some unwarranted assumptions which leads this argument to be unconvincing.
In the first place,the author seems to assume that the budgetary priority can refect the value degree to public school education accurately. However, it may not be case. First, there is no evidence concerning how much money really spent on the public school education in the end. It is possible that Parson City cannot carry out the budget plan and spend little money on the public school education, while Blue City spend much more money than the budget plan on public school education. Therefore, without the evidence about the real amount money spent on public school education, the argument seems invalid.
In the second place, even if budgetary priority can really reflect the value degree to public school education, which seems unwarranted, the author fails to consider other possible reasons that lead to the different amount of budget to public school education. Merely based on the comparison of budgetary priority to public education between Parson City and Blue City and the fact that the number of residents are the same of the two cities, the author makes such an assumption that it is only because the value degree to public school education are different. However,the same number of residents does not indicate that the number of students are also the same. It is very likely that the birthrate of Blue City is far lower than that of Parson City or maybe students in Blue City areinclined to learn at home rather than in public school, thus there are much fewer students attending to public school in Blue City, hence it does not necessarily to spend a large amount of money in public school education. Furthermore, it is possible that there are much personal invest to public school education in Blue City, thus it is unnecessary for the government to put a large amount of money on it. Without ruling out these possible factors, the argument seems unreasonable.
Finally, even if there are no other factors affecting the amount of budget on public school education and it is only due to different value degree that result in different amount of budget on public school education, which seems impossible, the author makes an assumption that it is the residents'value degree to public school. However, it is unreasonable since how to allocate the budget is determined by government and the value degree should be government's. It is possible that while residents are not satisfied with the government's budget plan, residents have no power to allocate more money to public school education in the budget plan. Therefore, without the direct evidence concerning the residents' attitude to public school education, the argument seems unpersuasive.
In conclusion, as it stands, the argument is rift with holes. To better evaluate the argument, the author needs to offer information concerning the final amount of money spent on the public school education, considering about other possible factors that affect the amount of budget on the
education and direct evidence about the residents' attitude to public school education.
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发表于 2012-4-29 17:53:54
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