argument74[AWER小组] 求拍

JasonDoveUID: 2322013

TOPIC: ARGUMENT74 - The following appeared in a newsletter about education policy.

"The average annual earnings of high school dropouts are significantly less than the average annual earnings of high school graduates. To address this problem, the state governor has proposed that the state should establish free vocational training programs for high school dropouts. But the availability of such programs would probably encourage some students who would otherwise have graduated to drop out in order to pursue vocational training. Hence the proposed programs would lower, not raise, the average earning potential of young people. Therefore, the state should not establish the vocational training programs but should instead focus on improving academic programs in our high schools."
WORDS: 417          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2008/3/6 22:04:19

This argument concludes that the state should establish academic programs in high schools rather than establish the vocational training programs. This argument is well-presented but not well reasoned. There are some facets that are questionable in the argument. I will discuss them in turn.

First, the author assumes without any justification that high school graduates may drop out from their schools in order to have the qualification to enroll in the free vocational training programs. This assumption bases on another potential assumption that vocational training are more valuable and may bring graduates higher salaries that high school education. However, no solid information is offered to prove this point. It seems that high school graduates would not drop out from schools to attend the vocational programs, because in general case, higher educated students would get better treatments from their potential employees than lower educated ones. One may argue that maybe there are some valuable courses which is enough to make drop out students be better than high school graduates, however, no evidence in the argument could indicate this point.

Secondly, even if the vocational programs would make high school graduates drop out to attend them, this does not reveal that the vocational programs would lower the average earning potential of young people. It is possible that there are thousands of dropouts and after the vocational programs, their salaries increased sharply while there are only several hundred graduates who drop out from their schools to attend the vocational programs and their salaries are only a litter lower than that they get as high school graduates. If so, the average earning of young people is unquestionably increased.

Finally, even if the author modified these factors above to be convincing, the author cannot reasonably draw the conclusion that the state should not establish the vocational training programs but should instead focus on improving academic programs in our high schools. It is likely that the number of dropouts is great, so left them earning seriously less than high school graduates is obviously not human. And if we let this situation develops, it may lead to some critical social problems, such as high crime rate and demonstrations. Moreover, the author show no evidence concerning that improving academic programs' merits when compared with the establishment of the vocational training.

In sum, the author fails to substantiate his claim that the state should spend resources to improve academic programs in high schools rather than establish vocational programs, because evidence in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the author maintains. If the analysis included some data with regard to the salaries of dropouts before and after the vocation training, the argument can be more convincing.

[ 本帖最后由 JasonDove 于 2008-3-6 22:49 编辑 ]