Name: Lim Kang Xin Daniel (19)Class: 3P1 Date:

24/5/2011

Analysing Arguments

Compare these two essays on ‘School’. Which one

advances acceptable arguments, and why? As you
read:

(i) Highlight arguments that work, as well as those that do not;

and
(ii) Offer your reasons along the margin (e.g. types of fallacies).
(iii) Locate topic sentences,
(iv) Supporting propositions; and
(v) Evidence provided.

1 Essay 1: School Days

School days, school days, good old golden rule

days,
5 Reading and writing and ‘rithmetic,
Dance to the tune of the hickory stick…
Topic
School days are the best time of your life, people sentence
say. Ha! Education is power, people say. Ho
10 hum. Let’s get behind the platitudes and take a
look at the facts.

In the first place, why do you stagger out of bed

on a dark winter’s morning, shivering with cold
15 and groggy with the previous night’s homework?
Why do you gulp down breakfast and fight your
way onto the bus? Why do you endure a day’s
mental labour in cramped, noisy conditions – and
finally creep home exhausted, to recover as best
20 you can for the next wearying round? Why?
Because you’ve got to. The law says so, your
parents tell you it’s good for you, the teachers
lock you in every day: what choice have you? Fallacy:
Besides, all your friends are under the same Dicto
25 sentence anyway, so you might as well have Simpliciter
some company in your misery. If school wasn’t
compulsory, the place would be as empty as a Fallacy:
graveyard. Hasty
Generaliza

1
30 As for the work done in schools these days: it’s tion
irrelevant rubbish! Everyone knows that
teachers are the most boring species of life
known to exist. We hear all the time about the
way bad education has caused current
35 unemployment. Employers throw up their hands
in horror at the kids sent to them for jobs. No
one can read, or write, or add up, or even show
good manners any more. The reason is school.
Kids force-fed nonsense are bound not to listen
40 after a few years. They learn nothing, they know Fallacy:
nothing, and they care not at all. Hasty
Generaliza
Consider some figures. Of every 100 students tion
starting Year 7 at a typical secondary school,
45 only 7 will get through to do HSC Maths! What’s
the matter with the rest? They can’t handle it.
Of course schools care only for smart kids. The
dumb ones are no good to anyone. Why can’t
they leave and get a job? Because if they did,
50 schools would have to close down, and the
teachers would be out of work. Topic
sentence
And what does this monumental waste of
resources amount to? Quite apart from teachers’
55 wages, every State school child costs the
taxpayer between $50 - $90 in direct grants
every year! If that money could be spent on
something worthwhile, think how this country Topic
would leap ahead. sentence
60
Education is like filling a bottle with sand. Only a
small trickle of knowledge can get in. Smash the
bottle and it’s easy. Abolish schools and there
would be a lot more real learning going on.
School is unnatural. Ignorance is the normal
human state. Any institution which ignores this
basic fact is doomed to failure. After 2500 years
of schools, the human race is just as stupid as it Fallacy:
ever was. Perhaps we should try a new way. Dicto
Simpliciter
In summing up, let me say that I was no good at
school. Did it ruin me? Not at all. Anyone who
can put up with modern schools is obviously a
dope. Let’s liberate those thousands of long-
suffering, under-age prisoners, send the teachers

2
 out to do some real work elsewhere, spit in the
eye of the dreary, elitist ragbags who say it’s
good for you (so is celery, and that’s for rabbits
too) – and give school the thumbs down at last.

65 Essay 2: The Truth about School

Like all major school institutions, school has its Topic

own folklore, its hand-me-down mythology. sentence
Parents routinely glorify it. They see the
70 scrubbed faces in the morning, nostalgically hear
the choruses of happy voices, visualize kindly Mr
Chips (these days bearded and up to date)
bending over the desks of his contented flock.
Children just as steadfastly scorn it. Boring, they
75 cry. Yuk! They remember the tedium, the fights
and petty cruelties. They know Mr Chips has bad
breath and feet of clay. Far from being heaven,
it is indeed a compulsory hell. Who is right?
What is the truth about school?
80 Topic
It may be useful to start by stating the obvious: sentence
school is essential. Why? Because our lives are
lived in a sophisticated community which simply
assumes that all young people will have acquired
85 complex skills by the time they go into the adult Fallacy:
world. The most elementary of these skills – Dicto
reading for example – is so far from being Simpliciter
instinctive that it takes years to master. If
systematic training of young people is desirable,
90 it follows that they are best trained by
specialists, working with convenient numbers of
learners in comfortable, reasonably equipped
venues, with a predictable schedule and suitable
quality controls. That is all school is. The ivory
95 tower iconoclasts who urge ‘deschooling’ on the
community are quite properly ignored as
theoretical curiosities. The few live examples of
‘free’ schools merely prove that the parameters
can be varied, that there are different types of
10 schools. They do not challenge the basic fact
0 that we have to live with school for better or Topic
worse. sentence

That raises the issue of quality in education. It is

easy to decry standards and rave about lax

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10 discipline. The evidence does not, however,
5 support the gloom merchants. Federal
government tests have demonstrated that most
children emerge from formal schooling able to
read, write and calculate to a satisfactory level of
competence. There are failures, to be sure, but
11 they are a small minority (3.7% according to
0 Australia Council figures reach adulthood unable
to read), and given the complex social and
psychological factors involved in learning
‘readiness’, this may be inevitable. The old
chestnut about methods being better in ‘the
11 good old days’ is also without tangible proof.
5 Standards have not declined compared with
earlier this century, as is often alleged.
According to ACER research, more children (both
numerically and as a percentage) now possess
basic skills than was the case earlier. The
12 reasons for this must have to do with the higher
0 qualifications of teachers (now universally a
minimum of three years tertiary training), the
refinement in techniques of instruction, the
number and quality of professional resources,
the relatively low class sizes, and the growing
12 expectations of parents and employers that a Topic
5 high standard of education is essential for almost sentence
any job.

The anti-school lobby, confronted with

arguments like these, is liable to switch the
13 debate to the matter of ‘law and order’. There’s
0 no discipline any more,’ remains a popular cry:
‘Kids do what they like. Teachers have no
control.’ Research on this is difficult to come by,
but a close look at real schools suggests that it is
at best a wild exaggeration.
13
5 Despite their ritual disclaimers, most kids like
school. Naturally, they don’t love every minute
of it. It goes without saying that there are some
subjects and teachers they just put up with. Of
course they can hardly wait to get away Friday
14 afternoon. But to see such predictable trivialities
0 as proof of a deep-seated angst is naïve. To
watch them in the schoolyard laughing and
chasing their friends puts paid to that myth. To

4
 see them in class, intent on their work,
participating energetically (for the most part) in
14 their learning, is the true test of what school
5 means. More are staying on to the higher levels,
not against their will, for they are legally free to
go, but to derive the benefits that schooling
offers.

The trouble with myths is that people hold them

up to reality, and seem genuinely shocked when
they don’t fit. School is not paradise, as some
might imply. It is not hell either. The evidence
seems to predominantly favour a positive view,
for the reasons mentioned. That is not to say it
cannot be improved on. But if anyone were to
seriously suggest that school should be
abolished, you wouldn’t be able to hear for the
clamour.