argument 31

东大的千叶

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 the argument, the author makes a conclusion that Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools that Blue
City residents do. In order to support the assertion, the author cites several evidences such a survey about the education fund of Parson City and the population of both city. These evidences seem to be logical and sounded, however, they are not only enough strong to back up the argument, but also make the conclusion absurd.


To begin with, the author claims that Parson City recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue
City. Nevertheless, we should pay attention to the organization which did the data processing, a local government or central government, official institution or unofficial institution, because of different data sources will lead to different authority and credibility. Additionally, even the data is convincing, it only indicates recently Parson City provides more education fund than Blue City which probably result from other possibilities as follows. In the past five years or ten years, Blue City’s education fund almost three times as much as Parson City’s, had already enough for residents’ demand of education. Hence, the “recently” data fail to be tenable. Again, there is another probability that Blue City has more private schools which do need government’s education fund. Therefore, it is reasonable for Blue City providing less education fund than Parson City.


What’s more, the author asserts that the two cities had the same number of residents and Parson City
has more education fund, so their residents place a higher value on education. In fact, the author omits certain pivotal information about the population. The structure of population, perhaps, Parson City has more children who are old enough to attend schools, so it is not surprise that they need more education fund. Also, the author merely depends on the education fund to evaluate the value on education, however, there are other indexes the author fail to point out such as the number of educated residents, curriculum settings and so on. These elements are understandable to be an essential role in education.


Finally, the author states the government’s education spending from beginning to end, yet it has a little relationship to what the attitude of residents to education, but the author’s conclusion is taking about residents’ value on education. Obviously, the author disguised replacement of concept. If the residents of these two cities influenced the decision of education spending by vote or other method, it would reflect the general attitude. However, the author has not provides enough background about that.



To sum up, the conclusion reached in the argument lacks credibility since the evidence cited in the analysis does no lend strong support to what the author claims. To make the conclusion more convincing, the author should provide more information concerning the situation of residents of the two cities, the number of public school and private school and so on, to better evaluate the argument. Otherwise the argument is logically unacceptable.

普渡哥

写得很好，good job!!!