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[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.
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发表于 2006-3-24 10:43:00
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