#26 - Commentator: Because of teacher hiring freezes, the

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Flaw—CE. The correct answer choice is (D)

The commentator’s argument is short and simple:

• Premise: [There are] teacher hiring freezes.
  
  Subconclusion/ Premise: The quality of education in that country will not improve.
  
  Conclusion: Thus, it will surely deteriorate.

The argument has several notable elements:

• The error in the argument occurs in the leap from subconclusion to conclusion: just because the quality of education will not improve does not necessarily mean it will deteriorate (it could stay the same). This mistake occurs because the author believes in the False Dilemma of two possible outcomes (that quality of education must either rise or fall) when there are actually three possible outcomes.
  
  The argument also features a causal relationship in the first sentence: teacher hiring freezes are the cause of a lack of improvement in the quality of education.
  
  The conclusion features strong and definite language—“will surely.” An answer choice that deviates from this level of certainty will be incorrect.

With three distinct elements to work with, this problem should be easy to solve. The challenge is in deciding which element to attack first. Try to match the conclusion first because it will be the easiest (and therefore fastest) element to identify in each answer choice:

• Answer choice (B) and (C) can be eliminated because they contain conclusions—“more likely” and “may,” respectively—that are different than “will.” Answer choice (A) has the same conclusion and remains a Contender. Be careful with answer choice (D) because the conclusion—“must”—is similar in certainty to “will surely.” The conclusion of answer choice (E), “will not,” remains in contention because the negative has no effect.

With only three remaining answer choices, let’s next match the False Dilemma that underlies the conclusion:

• Answer choice (A) seemingly relies on a similar assumption to that in the stimulus (that if one outcome does not occur then it must be the opposite outcome), but answer choice (A) is different from the stimulus because there are many different options for pizza, not just three.
  
  Answer choice (D) is the correct answer choice. Each element is matched, and a False Dilemma is used that assumes that temperatures cannot stay the same.
  
  Answer choice (E) is incorrect because the conclusion is identical to the premise: “impossible for the car to start” is the same as “it will not start.”

[wisnain]

These are the elements I identified in the stimulus:
(1) "will not" changes to "will" (same verb, but negative to positive)
(2) "improve" ↔︎ "deteriorate" (opposite terms)

I found answer choice (B) confusing because even though it didn't use the same verb as in the stimulus, I thought it followed a similar "pattern" of verb change (from "it will probably never" to "it is more likely"). I believed that if there's a match in the pattern, it could still be a valid answer. Could you please clarify what I might be missing?

[Dana D]

Hey Wisnain,

You correctly identified the flaw here - the stimulus mistakenly asserts that just because something doesn't improve, it will deteriorate. So we know we need an answer choice that has this same mistake of assuming that something which causes a lack of improvement will actually also cause deterioration.

We want to focus less on the verbs used and more on the level of surety in the stimulus. This one says that teacher hiring freezes will cause the quality of education to not improve. Looking at answer choice (B), attempts to prove the Golbach conjecture have failed and so it will probably never be proved - this is different than saying it will never be proved. And the next sentence goes on to say it is "more likely" to be disproved than proved - that's also less surety than the stimulus, which says it "will surely" deteriorate.

Hope that helped!