#7- Educator: Only those students who are genuinely curious

[jrafert]

I am very frustrated by this question. I did the section untimed for practice and I must have spent a full 5 minutes just staring at it scratching my head.

I do not understand why "a" is better than "b."

They state that only students who are curious about a topic can learn about it. Then, they say that no children enter the classroom with sufficient curiosity to learn all that a teacher must instill. So, a teacher's job, therefore...."

I find a) bizarre and contradictory. They have already stated that a child needs to be curious to learn. A strong prophase for this question would be "so a teacher's job, therefore, is to instill curiosity in children about the topics that they must learn."

a) simply restates one of the premises. All it basically says is "if a student is going to learn (if a teacher is going to meet their professional goals; these two are one and the same), they must be curious." It's redundant and doesn't make sense. We already know that a teacher's job requires curiosity for the fulfillment of its goals - this has been made clear in the question stem.

I chose b). I didn't think it was great but it was closest to my pre-phrase and made far more sense to me than any of the other answers.

I guess I'm just exasperated because since the start of studying, I have been getting on average -3 on the LR sections. I really don't think I am bad at logic, but I am consistently dumfounded by the logic of 2-3 questions in each practice test.

Help!

[Kristina Moen]

Hi jr,

Welcome to the forum! This is a Main Point question (because the "Fill in the Blank" part comes after the word "Therefore"). Sometimes the answer choices on a Main Point question can seem redundant because you already inferred it in your head! You're correct in your interpretation of the premises. "Only those students who are genuinely curious about a topic can successfully learn about that topic" indicates conditional reasoning. The word "only" is a Necessary Condition indicator, so being curious is necessary for successful learning. We're also told that students don't have sufficient curiosity to learn successfully "all that a teacher must instill." However, we must put those together.

Here, your prephrase is strong, but be careful not to become wedded to your prephrase. Sometimes the correct answer choice is worded differently. Let's look at your prephrase: "So a teacher's job, therefore, is to instill curiosity in children about the topics that they must learn." Compare that to "A requirement for fulfilling a teacher's goals is the stimulation as well as the satisfaction of curiosity." They are two sides of the same coin. Imagine this analogy: Your boss says "Your job is to sort this paperwork" vs. "A requirement for fulfilling your job is the sorting of this paperwork." In both cases, you'd better sort that paperwork! Your prephrase was good, but be flexible with different ways of wording the same concept.

Hope that helps.

[jrafert]

Thank you, this does help. I still struggle with the whole "LSAT logic is not always the same as real life logic" thing. I appreciate the fast response.