Argument74 【六人作文小组】第4周第5次作业

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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: 333                                    TIME: 0:30:00                                      DATE: 2009-2-1

In this newsletter, the author argues that since the availability of free vocational training programs would encourage some students who would otherwise have graduated in high school to drop out, such programs would lower the average earning of young people, given that average annual earnings of graduates are higher. As a result, the author draws the conclusion that the state should not establish such programs but instead improve academic programs in high schools. This argument suffers from several logic fallacies as following.

First of all, it is only a guess that some students would prefer to drop out in order to pursue the vocational training. The letter offers no evidences or data to support that guess. Besides, even if there will be students leaving schools because of the programs, most possibly it is because these students will benefit more from dropout, and that should not be a reason to object the establishment of the programs.

Furthermore, there is no sound evidence to announce that the average earning potential of young people will fall if some students drop out to pursue vocational training programs. It is entirely possible that these students don't perform well in high school, and even if they graduate they can not find good jobs. Or perhaps the vocational training programs are effective to increase the dropouts' earnings significantly, therefore increase the total average earning.

Finally, even if the proposed programs are not so efficient and should not be established, there is no good reason that the high schools' academic programs should be improved instead. The letter offers no information about the link between high schools' academic level and graduates' earnings. In fact, as a common sense, we know that a high schools' academic level is usually not so helpful for its graduates to earn more salary. Hence it is very likely that the effort to improve academic programs is a waste of financial resources.

In sum, the evidences in the letter are in sufficient to support the series of conclusions the author claims.

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