PrepTest 106, Section 2, Question 12
After several attempts to distract his young parrot(105 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(12 more words not shown)
- AWhen disciplining an(22 more words not shown)
- BWhen training an(24 more words not shown)
- CUsing physical discipline(17 more words not shown)
- DPhysical discipline should(6 more words not shown)
- EPhysical discipline should(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The parrot stopped chewing the furniture, but now it fears hands and sometimes bites. Was protecting the furniture worth that tradeoff? The author says no because chewing the furniture would not have hurt the bird. That is a judgment about what matters, not something we can derive from the training's success alone.
Then the puppy runs into a busy street, and the author approves Carla's physical discipline. The key difference seems to be the danger to the animal. George was protecting furniture from the parrot; Carla was protecting the puppy from potentially serious injury.
What we’re looking for
We're asked for a principle that would justify the two judgments. We need a rule that draws that distinction, not a blanket approval or rejection of physical discipline. My prediction is that its use must be tied to protecting the animal from dangerous behavior. Stopping behavior that merely annoys the owner wouldn't meet that standard.
Working the answers
- A
This focuses on the object used to administer discipline, not the reason for doing it. Carla used her hand, yet the author approves her action. A rule favoring a rolled-up newspaper to avoid fear of hands doesn't explain why George's action is rejected while Carla's is accepted.
- BCorrect
This restricts physical discipline to cases where it is needed to correct behavior that could seriously harm the animal. George's case fails that condition: the furniture chewing would not hurt the parrot. The fact that the training worked doesn't meet the principle's requirement.
Carla's case presents the relevant protective purpose. The puppy had bounded into a busy street, and the discipline stopped it from entering unaccompanied. That immediate danger supplies the distinction missing from a simple comparison of two owners hitting their animals.
The principle isn't permission to hit whenever an animal does something unwanted. Its terms require both a danger of serious harm and a need for the discipline. Among these choices, that is the rule that best explains the judgments' different treatment of the two cases.
- C
George did try several ways of distracting the parrot, so it would be wrong to say no alternatives were attempted. But the passage doesn't establish that every alternative failed, and it tells us nothing similar about Carla trying other approaches. More importantly, exhausting alternatives doesn't draw the given distinction between damage to furniture and danger to the animal.
- D
Both animals are young: one is a young parrot and the other a puppy. This rule would oppose physical discipline in both cases. It cannot support the author's approval of Carla's action while rejecting George's.
- E
The furniture chewing is described as recurring, while the puppy's escape is not described as a persistent problem. Focusing on persistence therefore doesn't explain why the first action is rejected and the second approved. The relevant distinction is the risk of serious harm to the animal, not how often the behavior has occurred.
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