LR Question 17 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Educator: Some experimental educational programs, based on…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: ‘First Teacher’ programs should be expanded.
REASONING: Some educational programs teach parents to be their child’s ‘First Teacher’. These children do better in school.
ANALYSIS: There could be selection bias. Who participates in these experimental education programs?
If only wealthy, educated parents enroll their children in experimental programs, then those children could be succeeding because of their background rather than the programs.
The right answer gives another alternate explanation: The parents in the program tended to be teachers. It makes sense that teachers did a good job teaching their children.
___________
- Who cares what children enjoy? The stimulus is only concerned with their school performance.
- CORRECT. If your mother is a teacher, she will literally be your ‘First Teacher’. It’s possible the program only worked because the parents have educational experience. Maybe most parents couldn’t achieve success withe the program because they don’t know how to teach.
- Who cares what parents think? The stimulus is about whether the program works, not whether it is popular.
- The argument didn’t hinge on cost. And precise estimates aren’t always needed. Suppose you’d be willing to spend up to $10 million on this program. If we knew the cost would be somewhere between $1-$2 million, then there’d be no problem funding the program even though the costs aren’t precise.
- ‘Some’ is a very useless word on strengthen and weaken questions. This could mean that 2 out of 100,000 children didn’t succeed. That’s to be expected.
More Resources for Weaken Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Weaken questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers weaken questions.
Do you actually mean that “some” is a useless word on weaken questions? In the explanation you wrote that some is a useless word on strengthen questions, but this is a weaken question, not a strengthen question.
Hi Meredith
Yes – some is useless in both strengthen and weaken questions (which are essentially two sides of the same coin). It gives us no sense of exactly “how many” – which can be the difference between weakening an argument substantially and having no effect on it whatsoever.
Hope that helps!
Good catch, I should have written “strengthen and weaken”. I just edited it. Both questions types are identical in how you should treat the word “some”.