Argument Type - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper. "In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend—the city-run public schools—comes from taxes that each cit

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.

"In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend—the city-run public schools—comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the budgetary priority they give to public education. For example, both as a proportion of its overall tax revenues and in absolute terms, Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City has for its public schools—even though both cities have about the same number of residents. Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do."

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

Composition:

This argument is well presented but far-fetched. It lays a claim that Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do. The argument is in effect definitely impractical due to several flaws after a close scrutiny, albeit it may appear plausible at a cursory glance.

First off, a threshold problem comes into being in this argument that the author clearly assumes larger proportion of revenues on education with same number of people means bigger concentration on education. However, this contention is open to a number of interpretations. We would never know if the same amount of residents would not necessarily result in proportional number of students. In this light, Blue city may have spent more on average since the number of students in Parson City might be, say, more than twice than that in Blue City. Thus, without accounting for and ruling out other likely scenarios, by no means could the author conclude that the students in Parson City receive more revenues in on average.

Moreover, even though the author might be able to provide evidence for us to deduce a solution to the problem presented above afterwards, the argument still maintains ill-conceived owing to another problem. It's totally possible that the gross revenue of Parson City is more than 2 times as those of Blue City. In this case, the amount of money in Blue City certainly occupies larger proportion. To corroborate his point, the author should pay a close heed to as well as cope with the representative alternatives, such as the amount of revenue both cities earn every year, at least. Only then could he bolster the conclusion.

Finally, even if the foregoing problems might turn out to be solved by ensuing evidence, a crucial problem remains that is the more money invested in education meaning the higher value on providing education? It's reasonable to cast doubts upon the author's presumption which I reject as inadequate. For instance, the author omits to inform us about the attitude of the residents in both cities. Perhaps they regard money as a means of policy but not a really effective way to improve the quality of education. Pursuing this line of reasoning, it proves to be the author's responsibility to mull over his provisos so as to pave the way for a more tenable argument.

In retrospect, the author seems precipitous to jump to the conclusion based on a series of problematic assumptions pertaining to the residents' attitude, the amount of revenues in both cities, as well as the proportion of students among residents.
To dismiss the spectre of implausibility in this argument, the author ought to come to grips with the problems mentioned above: (1) the proportion of students are the same in both cities; (2) the amounts of revenues are congruent in both cities; (3) and the residents 'attitudes are like the governments, which regard the amount of money as a criterion of the emphasis on education. Only by grasping the gist of sound assumptions could the author draw a convincible conclusion. After all, feckless attempts with a fallible method could be nothing but a fool's errand.

Time 30min
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