PrepTest 112, Section 3, Question 14
We learn to use most of the machines(49 more words not shown)
The argument depends on assuming(5 more words not shown)
- AFewer people receive(14 more words not shown)
- BFacility in operating(18 more words not shown)
- CMost jobs in(20 more words not shown)
- DStudents cannot attain(15 more words not shown)
- EWhen learning to(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Using a phone isn't the same as building one. Written instructions may help me use a machine without understanding its inner workings. But someone still has to design and build it.
That's why the move to tomorrow's job market makes me pause. The passage starts with the machines most of us use in everyday life and ends with a claim about which education prepares students better for future jobs. What do those jobs require? If technical work matters in that market, ease of ordinary use won't settle the value of expertise.
What we’re looking for
My initial prediction is that the argument needs a connection between the machine use it describes and the work students will be doing. The necessary assumption should protect that connection. We don't need to insist that expertise is useless everywhere; the conclusion is a general comparison with an education emphasizing verbal and quantitative skills.
Working the answers
- A
The number of people receiving a traditional education doesn't establish how well either education prepares a student for the future. There could be more such students or fewer without changing the comparison the author needs to make. The argument doesn't depend on this enrollment trend.
- B
'Facility' here means skill or ease in operating a machine. Expertise might improve that skill in some cases without generally making a technical education better preparation for the job market. Someone who understands a phone's inner workings might use it more efficiently, but that doesn't settle the relative value of the two educations. The argument doesn't require B's sweeping claim that expertise almost never helps operation.
- CCorrect
This addresses another way the job market might differ from ordinary machine use: jobs could require operating many machines designed only for experts. If that were a widespread requirement, the fact that our everyday machines are easy for nonexperts would be a poor reason to dismiss technical preparation.
C rules out that requirement for most jobs. It doesn't eliminate every specialized job, or establish that nobody will build machines. It protects the argument from relying on ordinary, user-friendly machines when the relevant jobs generally demand the ability to use many specialized machines.
- D
Students could receive both kinds of training. That possibility doesn't prevent us from comparing how much each contributes to their preparation. The argument says technological expertise would prepare them no better; it doesn't need technical learning and verbal or quantitative learning to be impossible to combine.
- E
'Never' is far broader than the general job-market claim. Technical expertise might be especially useful when learning a particular specialized machine, even if that machine matters to relatively few jobs. The author doesn't need to deny every such case. E also concentrates on learning machines rather than establishing what the overall future job market demands.
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