132. The following appeared in a letter to the school board in the town of Centerville."All students should be required to take the driver's education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville ha

The argument makes a number of unwarranted assumptions regarding the mandatory driver’s education for every student of Centerville high school. Taken as a whole these unstated premises render the argument suspicious. If the unstated premises does not hold true, the argument falls apart.

First, in the letter, the speaker assumes that the car accidents which are teenagers are involved are largely responsible for the Centerville students. However, even though many teenagers are actually involved in the accidents, the speaker fail to bridge the logic supporting that these accidents are happened because of the carelessness of Centerville high school ‘s students. One may presume that the accidents are actually caused by the negligence of adult drivers or other teenagers except for Centerville high school’s students. The speaker of the given letter should have presented the evidence supporting that the responsibility of the recent car accidents around Centerville is generally caused by Centerville high school students.

Second, as the letter mentioned, there are only two driving schools in Centerville area. It is highly doubtful that these driving training institutes can provide the entire high school students with the sufficient amount of training. If the teenager drivers are unskilled, and their poor driving techniques are blamed for the frequent accidents, one may conclude that these teenagers are in need of rather intensive driving courses. However, those two driving schools might fail to train the teenage drivers with enough quantity of education because of the limitation of the facility. To make the argument sustainable, the speaker should have proven that the driving education institutes have enough accommodation for the entire of students.

Third, even if we admit that the students should resign the responsibility of the accidents, and also acknowledge the driving schools have enough seats for all the students, there is one more issue to be answered: there is little probability that every student of Centerville high school commute by a car. Maybe the majority of the students are dependent on public transportation, bicycles, or walking. Rendering only the students with vehicles to participate to the driver’s education is rather viable option than the speaker’s claim. It would be a waste of limited budget if the school allows every student to attend the program.

To sum up, in order to evaluate the suggestion, we need to ensure the following assumptions: the exact responsibility of the recent car accidents around Centerville, the size of capacities of two driving schools, and the proportion of the students with personal vehicles.