Argument214 <Chasing For "6" Score 小组第一次作业>偶第一篇A

rickbaiUID: 2206364

偶的第一篇Argue, 麻烦大家看看大方向对不对，需要往哪方面努力，谢谢！
Topic：214In each city in the region of Treehaven, the majority of the money spent on government-run public school education comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the value they place on public education. For example, Parson City typically budgets twice as much money per year as Blue City does for its public schools—even though both cities have about the same number of residents. It seems clear, therefore, that Parson City residents care more about public school education than do Blue City residents.
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This argument seems to have reached a rather obvious conclusion: since the Parson City residents spend more money per person than Blue City residents do, they care more about public school education. However, the arguement is seriously flawed, thus making its conclusion very suspectable.

First of all, although both cities have about the same number of residents, they don't necessarily collect the same amount of taxes. There are numerous cities that have similar scale of populations, but the income level varies greatly with their particular economic development situation. If there are lots of high-tech companies in Parson City, the residents there will pay more taxes than residents in Blue City, in which the majority of population happens to be farmers or blue-collar workers. Wealthier people are normally more generous on public education, so the arguer should not pay attention to the education budget, but on its proportion in the tax income.

Secondly, willing to spend more money doesn't equal caring more about public education. Paying more bills is not the only way to improve education quality. Probably it's even not the best way. Maybe Parson City is building bigger schools, bigger libraries and better playgrounds, but those alone does not lead to better education. On the contrary, the Blue City residents may spend less money on education, but they can be spending more time. Volunteering in a school for blind children on every weekend, for example, indicates more concerns about it than merely donating 1000 dollars.

The arguer based the whole argument on the fact that "Parson City typically budgets twice as much as Blue City does..." But what exactly does the word "typically" mean? How long has the arguere been observing the budgets of these two cities? Has Parson City been budgeting more for education ever since 50 years ago? Blue /city could be spending more than Parson City on education for the past two decades, and just until recently did they decide to reduce the budget, only because there are already enough resources for public school education in Blue City.

In general, this argument is badly reasoned and based on unclear statistics. For this reason, its conclusion is apparently doubtable.

[ 本帖最后由 rickbai 于 2007-1-31 20:42 编辑 ]