PrepTest 133, Section 2, Question 4
Pundit: The average salary for teachers in our(19 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the pundit's(6 more words not shown)
- Apresumes, without providing(7 more words not shown)
- Bfails to consider(19 more words not shown)
- Cfails to consider(22 more words not shown)
- Dcompares teachers' salaries(15 more words not shown)
- Efails to compare(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Does a bigger paycheck mean society cares more?
The pundit assumes it does. Teachers earn less on average than athletes, so the pundit concludes that society values sports more than education. But pay can reflect things other than how important we think the work is. A professional athlete might attract a huge paying audience and advertising revenue. That could help explain a large salary without establishing that people consider education less important.
We can accept the salary comparison and still question what it tells us about society's values. The evidence is about pay; the conclusion is about what society values. The author hasn't explained why those must line up.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks us to identify a problem with that reasoning. My first objection is that salaries need not measure social importance. Let's see whether the choices capture that concern or reveal another problem with using this salary comparison.
Working the answers
- A
The argument never assumes that playing or watching sports teaches people anything. It compares the value society places on two activities; it doesn't say that one activity provides the benefits of the other. Whether sports have educational value doesn't explain the salary-to-value jump.
- BCorrect
There's another problem: the average salary isn't the total amount spent. There could be many more teachers than professional athletes. Even if each teacher earns much less, adding all those salaries together could produce a larger total.
Imagine one athlete earning $1 million and one hundred teachers each earning $50,000. The athlete earns twenty times as much as an individual teacher, but the teachers collectively earn $5 million. A higher average for athletes can coexist with far more money going to teachers.
And B concerns total spending on education and sports, not just salaries. Even if we accepted the pundit's idea that spending reveals priorities, the average salaries alone wouldn't tell us which activity receives more money overall.
- C
Both groups having time away from their usual work doesn't establish which activity society values more. We haven't been given a difference in working schedules that explains or undermines the salary comparison. This observation about both groups leaves the pundit's central inference unaddressed.
- D
Why do we need plumbers' salaries? The conclusion compares education with sports, not education with every other profession. Salaries in a third field aren't required just because that field exists. The problem is what the given comparison establishes, not the failure to make unrelated comparisons.
- E
We're discussing priorities within this society. Teachers could earn more or less in another society without resolving whether this society values sports more than education. E changes the comparison instead of identifying a problem with the one the pundit makes.
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