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 have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving schools in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The argument is well-presented and appears to be relatively sound at first glance: since several car accidents have involved teenage drivers, requiring them to taking driver’s education course seems reasonable. However, as more light is shed on the issue and more detailed facts are concerned, it is easy to see that the argument suffers from several grave fallacious in its assumptions.
First of all, the author assumes that teenage drivers’ involvements in car accidents are pressing issue. Although it may be true that the teenagers were part of accidents, there is no clear evidence that the accidents were actually caused by the teenage drivers’ faults. To be specific, the car accidents could have occurred not because of the lack of driving skills of teenage drivers but due to the adverse weather. If this would be the case, it is far-fetched to assume that the lack of driving education caused the car accident; therefore, illogical to force them to take driver’s education class.
Another assumption the author makes is that the mandatory driving courses by Centerville High School is the only option to educate the teenage drivers. The author hastily rules out another option of utilizing two driving schools since parents are strapped for cash. However, it should be take into account that the school board can ask the state government to provide subsidy to those driving schools so that they can provide a professional and effective lessons to students. Since those driving school are better at teaching necessary driving skills and information, it would be wise to consider this option as well.
Lastly, the author assumes the soundness of the conclusion that all students should be required to take the driver’s education course at Centerville High School. Although taking this course can lessen a number of accidents by teenage drivers, the author should note that it is far-fetched to require all students to take this course. It is plausible that some parents may be affluent enough to let their children to take professional driving course so, for these students, taking driving course at school is waste of their time and efforts. Therefore, the driver’s education course should be mandatory to most students at best.
In conclusion, the unsubstantiated assumptions made by the author weaken his/her argument. To bolster his/her argument, the author should provide detailed statistics regarding the car accidents rule out other options of education course and prove soundness of the conclusion.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not exactly, better to argue the quality of the program in the high school, is it as good as those driving schools?
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 405 350
No. of Characters: 2070 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.486 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.111 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.64 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.312 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.862 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.812 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.632 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.16 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5