from a letter to the editor of a city newspaperone recent research study has indicated that many adolescents need more sleep than they are getting, and another study has shown that many high school students in our city are actually dissatisfied with their

The writer of the argument recommends that if high schools want to upgrade their student performance and learning ability, they should start one hour later to let their students sleep more in the morning. However, this recommendation cannot be accepted because it rests on a number of premises all of which can be challenged in one way or another.

The first problem with the argument is that the author refers to a study about high school students’ performance but does not indicate how many people took part in the study reported. In research studies the greater the number of the people in the sample, the more reliable and valid the findings are. Maybe only ten people participated in this study; hence, the findings of such a study are neither reliable nor valid. Even if it is assumed that enough people took part in this study, there is still another problem with the other study. In a research study, the findings can be generalized to the target population if the sample used is representative of the concerned population in terms of age, sex, social class, culture, etc.; however, in this argument there is no evidence to show that the sample used for the study about adolescents’ need of sleep was representative of the high school students. It follows that the findings of this study cannot be applied to the members of the high school students without reservations.

Another problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that lackluster academic performance of high school's students has happened because they have sleep deprivation; however, there is no evidence to prove that their poor performance actually happened because of lack of sleep. For example, maybe lackluster performance has happened because the teachers are novice and are not able to prepare students well enough.

A third problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that things remain the same over the time; however, in most cases this is not true. Maybe starting schools later causes that students go to bed later; therefore, it cannot give them an extra hour of sleep.

At the final analysis, the writer's recommendation cannot be taken to be correct because, as it was shown in the body paragraphs above, it depends on a number of assumptions each of which is questionable. The recommendation can only be accepted if the weaknesses already referred are all removed.