#11 - Some teachers claim that students would not learn

[smile22]

Could you please explain why answer E is correct? I chose answer C.

[David Boyle]

Could you please explain why answer E is correct? I chose answer C.

Hello smile22,

This is a typical "false dilemma" question. Answer (E), "fails to consider that some students may be neither fascinated by nor completely indifferent to the subject being taught", shows the problem, i.e., that two extremes are being considered (obsession with subject vs. total boredom with subject), ignoring the vast middle reaches of students who may be *moderately* interested in a subject.

Answer (C), "fails to consider that the incentive of grades may serve some useful nonacademic purpose", is pretty much out of scope since we're talking about academic stuff, not nonacademic.

Hope this helps,
David

[smile22]

That makes complete sense. Thank you.

[acaiblueberry]

Hi, would you mind explaining why A is incorrect?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi acaiblueberry,

This argument focuses on whether or not grades have any academic purpose. Some teachers claim that grades provide an incentive for learning curricular content, but the author disagrees. The author shows two extreme situations in which grades would not actually help incentivize students to learn the material and then concludes that grades serve no academic purpose.

As David mentions in his post above (Post #2), the flaw is that the argument creates a false dilemma between two extreme cases and ignores the possible cases in the middle in which grades may incentivize students who have some interest in learning the subject (although not intense interest in the subject) and could benefit from the additional motivation of grades. This flaw is best captured in Answer E.

As for Answer A, the argument is not assuming (i.e. taking for granted) that the only purpose of school is learning a fixed body of information. The argument is only focused on the learning of information because that was the reason given by the opposing viewpoint for the purpose of grades. In other words, some teachers argue that grades help students learn, and the author of this argument disagrees with that claim.

There may be other purposes of school besides learning (such as following rules, social interaction, making friends, etc.), but those other purposes aren't necessarily related to whether or not grades help students learn, which is the focus of this argument, so those would be irrelevant to this argument.