LR Question 10 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Although the charter of Westside School states that…
QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption
CONCLUSION: The school is violating its charter.
REASONING: The charter says the schools needs to have some students with special educational needs. But there are no children with learning disabilities.
ANALYSIS: This is a bad argument because it doesn’t make clear that all students with special educational needs have a learning disability. The school might have students with special educational needs even if none of them have a learning disability.
We could show that all special needs students have a learning disability. Then the lack of students with a learning disability means that there are also no special education students.
___________
- Not quite. This leaves open the possibility that there is a student who has special educational needs but doesn’t have a learning disability.
- The stimulus already tells us that no students with learning disabilities are enrolled. This is just repetition.
- This tells us what we should do: it’s a value judgment. But the stimulus is making a statement of fact: there are currently no special needs students enrolled.
- CORRECT. Every special needs student has a learning disability. Since there are no students with learning disabilities then there must be no students with special educational needs.
- This doesn’t tell us whether or the charter actually is being violated.
More Resources for Sufficient Assumption Questions
- Conditional Reasoning Article: Learn about conditional statements.
- LR Diagrams Guide: Learn how to draw LR diagrams.
- Intro to Conditional Reasoning: Learn conditional reasoning basics.
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Sufficient Assumption questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers sufficient assumption questions.
Can I please get a simple and concise breakdown on why it is not B or C? I don’t understand why D is valid and B/ C are not.
This argument is saying:
1. Charter says: We must have some students with special educational needs.
2. Currently, we have no students with learning disabilities.
3. So, we are violating the Charter.
But the Charter tells us a rule about special needs, whereas the observation tells us a rule about learning disabilities. Those aren’t the same thing, but the argument is assuming they are. So we need to state that assumption.
We need something that tells us: All students with special educational needs have learning disabilities.
That would give us a clean argument:
1. Charter says: We must have some students with special educational needs.
2. All students with special educational needs have learning disabilities.
2. Currently, we have no students with learning disabilities (therefore, no one with special needs).
3. So, we are violating the Charter.
That’s what D gives us. It helps connect special needs and learning disabilities.
Maybe an analogy would help see this. Imagine I said:
1. Our club rules say we must have at least one musician.
2. Right now, there are no pianists in the club.
3. So, our club is violating this rule.
But why? Maybe the club has guitarists, singers, drummers, etc. It’s a bad argument right now. To fix it, it needs: “The only musicians are pianists.” That would make the conclusion work. It rules out the possibility that other people could count as musicians. Since you have to be a pianist to be a musician, and we have no pianists, we’re breaking the rule.
As for the other answers:
B just tells us what we already know. It says there’s no student with learning disabilities, but the stimulus already said that at the end of the first sentence. It introduces no new information.
C is about what the school SHOULD do. The stimulus makes no claim about this. The argument is just that the school is currently violating its own charter. It doesn’t try to argue anything about how the school should fix this or what steps they need to take. It’s simply saying: “You (the school) have this rule. You’re breaking it.”
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have further questions.