PrepTest 120, Section 3, Question 4
To the editor: For generations, magnificent racehorses have(74 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- AIf good character(15 more words not shown)
- BIn other areas(11 more words not shown)
- CIn most areas(15 more words not shown)
- DChildren whose parents(9 more words not shown)
- EWhere voters have(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Can parents raise good children even when gambling is available nearby?
The writer treats the racetrack as a threat to children's character. I have a few questions before accepting that. Would building a track necessarily create the gambling atmosphere described? And is gambling really getting something for nothing? A gambler risks money and could lose it. We don't need to approve of gambling to notice that the description skips the risk.
More directly, even if the track brings gambling, parents might still teach their children good values. The presence of gambling doesn't automatically tell us how children are raised or what they learn. That's the connection I'd most want a weakener to challenge.
What we’re looking for
Another possible response would be that benefits, such as tax revenue, offset the harm. But we don't have evidence of those benefits yet. Let's look for a reason the writer's warning doesn't justify telling everyone who values good character to vote against the track.
Working the answers
- A
This protects children who already developed good character before their environment changed. It doesn't explain how children growing up with the racetrack would develop that character in the first place. The writer's concern is about raising children in that setting, not merely whether an already established trait can survive a move to a different environment.
- BCorrect
Parents elsewhere manage to raise children of good character despite the presence of gambling. That challenges the claimed conflict between allowing gambling and raising good children.
It doesn't show that gambling has no harmful effects, or that every family handles it well. It shows that the environment doesn't make good upbringing impossible in the way the warning suggests. Someone could value children's character and still question whether banning this track is needed to protect it.
- C
More adults gambling would fit the writer's concern that a racetrack increases gambling's place in the community. It doesn't establish that those adults' children develop poor character, but it gives us no counterexample or other reason to doubt the claimed danger. It points toward more gambling, not toward the protection we're looking for.
- D
Not becoming a gambler isn't the same as developing good character. A child could avoid gambling as an adult and still have other character problems. This answer doesn't directly challenge the claim about character, whereas B does. We shouldn't treat the writer's broader concern as if it were only a prediction that children will copy their parents' gambling.
- E
Other voters' decisions don't establish that those decisions were wise or good for children. The argument tells these voters what they should do based on a claimed consequence. A history of approval elsewhere doesn't show whether that consequence occurs.
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