Proposals for extending the United States school year to bring it more in line with its European and Japanese counter...

Sophie on July 9, 2020

I would also appreciate an explanation as to why D is wrong. Thanks!

shunhe on July 17, 2020

Hi @avif and @Sophie,

Thanks for the question! So first, let’s reconstruct this argument and see what we can get out of it.

We’re told that proposals to make the US school year longer face an objection that making summer vacation shorter would violate an established tradition. But, says the author, this objection is wrongly applied here. The author thinks that the tradition only happened back then because the children were in rural areas that needed the labor. And so if we were going to appeal to tradition to justify a policy, it would be a policy of determining the length of the school year based on the needs of the economy.

So now we’re asked for a principle that, if accepted, would help justify the conclusion. Well, let’s take a look at (A) first. What does (A) tell us? That

Tradition justifies maintaining policy —> ~Conflict with more pressing social needs

And the contrapositive is of course

Conflict with more pressing social needs —> ~Tradition justifies maintaining policy

But what is the more pressing social need? We’re not told about any more pressing social need in the argument. So this can’t be the right argument. And the conclusion is that the objection is misapplied, not that the policy isn’t justified by tradition. So (A) doesn’t even get us to the conclusion that we want, and is wrong.

Now let’s take a look at (D), which tells us that traditional principles should be discarded when they no longer serve the needs of the economy. This is diagrammed

~Serve needs of economy —> Discard traditional principle

Again, this doesn’t get us to our conclusion, which is about the objection being wrong. The author also isn’t arguing necessarily that we should shorten the summers, the author is just arguing about the reasoning used to decide whether or not we should shorten the summers. And the author doesn’t say if the closing of schools no longer serves the needs of the economy or not. So again, (D) is wrong.

Now take a look at (E), which tells us that the actual tradition embodied in a given practice can be accurately identified only by reference to the reasons that originally prompted that practice. Well, if that’s true, then it’s true that the objection is wrong, since then it would be true that what’s important is about determining the length of the school year based on the needs of the economy.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

Sophie on July 24, 2020

Thank you!