PrepTest 122, Section 1, Question 6
Patti: Most parents are eager for their preschoolers(65 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AParents who use(16 more words not shown)
- BChildren will have(14 more words not shown)
- CThe type of(15 more words not shown)
- DThe type of(19 more words not shown)
- EGeneral opportunities to(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Children learn by exploring. Why would that mean a parent's guidance can't help too?
A parent interested in math might encourage a child to count things. A parent who cares about the environment might direct attention to plants and animals. Patti says children already learn an enormous amount by growing and adapting to the world. Fine, but that doesn't show that these directed activities are unlikely to improve their education. Learning one way doesn't rule out benefiting from another way.
Think of food: knowing that spinach is nutritious doesn't establish that potatoes have no nutritional value. Likewise, pointing to the benefits of natural curiosity doesn't, by itself, establish the limits of directed learning.
What we’re looking for
We're looking for an assumption Patti needs. I'd start with that unsupported dismissal of the additional help: what lets Patti treat children's ordinary learning as a reason directed learning probably won't improve things? The answer may expose one specific problem with that separation rather than supply a rule that fixes the entire argument.
Working the answers
- A
Patti doesn't need a theory about where parents got this practice. They could have copied their own parents, followed a psychologist, or simply chosen activities they enjoy. Whether directed learning helps children doesn't depend on the parents having encountered misguided psychological theories.
- B
General parental help is broader than the particular practice Patti criticizes: directing learning toward parents' personal concerns. Children could need parental help in other ways whether or not that practice improves their education. B isn't a claim Patti's argument requires.
- C
If this kind of directed learning enhances general learning opportunities, that gives us a reason it could help. Patti is trying to argue that it is unlikely to improve the child's education. She doesn't need to assume this benefit in order to reach that conclusion.
- DCorrect
What if the directed learning is a necessary part of the very growing-and-adapting process Patti praises? Then she couldn't use the benefits of that process to dismiss directed learning as unlikely to improve education. That learning would be helping make the beneficial process possible.
D rules out that possibility. It doesn't prove that directed learning adds nothing, but it protects a distinction Patti needs: the ordinary development she relies on cannot itself require the practice she is discounting.
- E
What typically happens in the early years of formal education doesn't establish whether this kind of parental direction improves a preschooler's education. Patti's comparison concerns directed learning and the learning children gain through growing and adapting. She need not make E's claim about formal schooling.
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