Educator: Some experimental educational programs, based on the principle that children's first education should take ...

Jacob-R on December 6, 2018

I’m happy to help. In order to understand why the answer is B, let’s first start with the question stem.

We are looking for an answer that weakens the argument. What is the argument? The educator is saying that some education programs instruct parents to be the child’s first teacher. And the school performance of children in these programs is better than average. This shows that these programs are successful and should be expanded.

Answer B is correct because it gives an alternative reason for why the school performance of children in these programs is better than average. That is, it is not because the model is necessarily good — instead, we now have information that the parents participating have prior experience as educators, and so are not likely to be a representative sample, or are unlikely to have the same result when expanded to a broader parent population, etc. Thus, the argument is weakened.

I hope that helps! Please let us know if you have further questions.

letc on December 8, 2018

Thanks that makes sense. Is E wrong because it is talking about those who didn't participate in the program, thus out of scope ? The stimulus talks about those who participated only.

Ravi on December 16, 2018

@letc,

Great question. (E) does not weaken the educator's argument because it is not attacking the reasoning for the efficacy of the program. It says that some children (so, at least one child) who aren't in the program do exceptionally well in school.

So what? The wording is very weak (as mentioned, this could just be one kid), and just because some children are doing well outside of the program, it doesn't mean that the program is ineffective.

Thus, we can safely eliminate (E).

maggsll on January 8, 2020

Loved the explanation, thanks!