December 2013 LSAT Section 1 Question 4

Consultant: Children taught using innovative new educational methods learn to think more creatively than children tau...

NoahM on June 28, 2020

How can we know (w/o a clearly stated premise) that children aren't the ones working at the corporation?

I understand the answer to this question, but without a premise on adults working doesn't this argument include a logical jump? (I understand its near obvious that adults are the ones working at corporations, but I could hypothetically argue for a country with no child labour laws).

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shunhe on June 29, 2020

Hi @NoahM,

Thanks for the question! So a couple of things on this one. First, it is a HUGE HUGE jump to assume that ALL of the employees at this corporation are children. And if there are any adults at this corporation, then (D) still applies, since obviously the children should be educated using the innovative methods, and we just need something to also show that the adults at the corporation should also be educated using the innovative methods. And that’s what (D) does.

Onto the second point: yes, it is true that you’re not supposed to bring in outside knowledge on the LSAT. For example, if you’re a biology major and the LSAT gets something wrong about the endoplasmic reticulum or the mitochondria, don’t immediately eliminate an answer choice because of that. But you are allowed to use “common sense,” which is kind of murky sometimes, but in this case, it’s pretty clear that children are not going to be the main workers at corporations (if they work at them at all). It’s definitely more of an assumption to assume that the company has a substantial population of children than to assume that it doesn’t based on what we know about how corporations actually work (at least in the US, and the LSAT is pretty US-centric). So basically, don’t bring in outside knowledge that wouldn’t be considered common sense, but things like “children aren’t employed at corporations” is pretty straightforward and can be assumed for the LSAT.

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