LR Question 13 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Community organizations wanting to enhance support for…
QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion
CONCLUSION: Community organizations need to convince the public that higher education is good for all of society.
REASONING: It’s easier to get the public to support programs which benefit everyone, like road building.
ANALYSIS: On identify the conclusion questions, always ask yourself “why are they telling me this?”. Pretend the author is a real person. In this case, the author is giving advice to community groups that want to get funding for higher education. The author is telling them how to make their case. The author says that community groups should argue that higher education benefits everyone.
The second sentence, that the public is receptive to widely beneficial programs, is not the conclusion. This is evidence supporting the idea that the approach in the first sentence will be effective.
The words “for example” are a structural indicator. They show that what comes after “for example” is a premise supporting the conclusion.
Note: You may think that higher education obviously benefits everybody. Why would anyone have to argue for that? The main reason you believe university benefits everyone is because you went to university. The American university system asserts that education benefits everyone in order to justify its existence. That claim is not a universal truth.
___________
- CORRECT. See the analysis above.
- This is a premise supporting the plan of arguing that higher education benefits us all.
- This is an example of a program that’s popular because the benefits are widespread.
- This is evidence supporting the argument that community groups should therefore argue that higher education benefits us all.
- The author didn’t say that higher education benefits us all. They said community groups should say that it does, in order to get funding. This is a subtle distinction, but it’s important to notice these.
More Resources for Identify the Conclusion Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Identify the Conclusion questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers identify the conclusion questions.
The thing is, the answer as it was provided was NOT in the body of the paragraph, nor was is ever suggested in that way. The conclusion is clearly (D), and (A) is only something that COULD be supported by the conclusion of this argument. There were 2 questionable problems in this section, numbers 13 and 23.
You won’t get far arguing with LSAT answers. The first sentence says A; it says that community orgs much convince the public.
D is reasoning for the conclusion. If your approach makes the public more receptive, then that helps you convince them.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.