Hi, All---

Can anyone please help me better understand this question? Critical Reasoning Guide, Cht. 7 (Weaken), #8 "Earnings Gap":

In the United States, adults who don't graduate high school earn on average 35% less than adults who do graduate high school. No other industrialized nation has such a severe earnings gap; adults without a HS diploma typically earn about 80 percent of the salaries earned by high school graduates in nations across Asia, Europe and elsewhere. These figures clearly indicate that American high schools are the world's best at teaching advanced skills to their students.

Each of the following statements, if true, weaken the author's claim EXCEPT:

A. Of all the industrialized nations, the United States has the lowest proportion of specialized tradesmen, people who often lack high school diplomas yet earn high salaries for their skills.
B. Due to recent global changes, in many newly industrialized nations advances in education precede advances in business infrastructure, resulting in a disparity between skilled employees and the jobs which would require these skills.
C. Unlike in the United States, in certain other industrialized nations it is possible for a student to attend a university without earning a high school diploma.
D. A survey of sixth graders around the world revealed that children in North America spend, on average, fewer hours per week studying than do their counterparts in Europe.
E. The unemployment rate for adults in the United States who didn't finish high school is significantly higher than the rate for their counterparts in most other industrialized nations.

Here was my thought process:

Re-phrasal: US HS degree harder than those of countries because US better at teaching advanced skills and that's why U.S. non HS grads make so much less.

A. At first, this statement sounded like it went along with the author's claim. The US HS degree is much harder to get, that's why the US doesn't have as many non HS grads who earn high salaries for their skills. But after thinking about it some more, I decided to mark this choice as weakening the argument, although for a reason different than the one given in the book. My reasoning was that this weakened the argument because someone could learn the advanced skills in a US HS, not graduate HS, but still could have learned enough in school to make a good living.
B. I put Strengthen. I thought that this statement just explained why some other nations' high schools weren't doing a better job "teaching advanced skills" - they simply didn't have the infrastructure.
C. I wasn't sure about this one. It sounded like it would strengthen the argument (foreign HS diploma not strong like US HS diploma, so it's not as important when applying to college.) But the guide says this weakens the argument. Can someone please explain to me where I'm going wrong?
D. I have a tough time with answer choices that involve questions of time spent. More time spent could be interpreted that the student is learning more or that the student is not as bright and takes longer to understand the material (like me!).
E. This sounded to me like it was strengthening the argument.

Basically, I put down the incorrect conclusion for virtually each answer choice. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Still scratching my head...

We haven't forgotten about you! I've asked our curriculum director to address your question but he's been out sick - he'll get back to you as soon as he can!

Hi VBill,

Sorry about the delay! Here are my thoughts:

1) I'm not in love with your rephrasing: I think you've introduced a slightly different concept up front ("harder") which isn't stated anywhere in the argument. I think that THIS discrepancy is the major source of your difficulties, as I look at your explanations of your thought processes. (I'm really glad you wrote this rephrasing down, because it reveals the core issue.)

Make sure that when you're rephrasing, you're not introducing differences. Here's how I'd rephrase, i.e., restate:

"US hs best at teaching advanced skills. 'Proof' - US non hs grads earn 35% less than hs grads. In other industrialized countries, earnings gap is smaller."

Note that this argument NEVER says anything about how HARD US high schools are -- and the concept of "hard" is vague. Do you mean "difficult to get through" purely, or are you including "fails out a lot of people"? Either way, according to the argument, it COULD be the case that US high schools are just brilliant educational factories that simply download into everyone's brains advanced skills, like magic, failing no one. Right? Don't read into the argument.

2) As you analyze the answer choices, recognize that you're looking for FOUR "weaken's." That should stand to reason, because this argument has a lot of holes in it, right? Let's make the argument real with some numbers and places: let's imagine that we have a US non-hs grad earning $10/hour. Then, according to the argument, the US hs grad will earn ~$15/hour (take 35% off $15 and you get ~$10). In order to conclude that the US high schools are really the best at teaching advanced skills (a claim we should all doubt, unfortunately, speaking as a former high school teacher!), we would have to imagine that the non-US non-hs grad earns, say, $10/hour; the non-US hs grad earns $12.50; and the WHOLE REASON for the bigger difference in the US is that our high schools "lift" our $10/hour students so much more! This is very sketchy evidence. Let's look at the answer choices:

A) This choice points out, in effect, that maybe we should slide the non-US scale upwards. Maybe the non-US hs grads also earn $15/hour, but the non-US NON-hs grads make significantly MORE than $10 an hour -- because these non-hs grads are made up of a greater proportion of well-paid specialized tradespeople. So the smaller gap elsewhere is that the NON-hs grads outside of the US have better skills & are paid better. Your thinking is reading too much into the situation.

B) This choice points out that the $12.50 the non-US high school grad is earning is not "apples to apples" -- it's weighed down because high school grads in some other countries have to take jobs below their ability/skill level. We'll rewrite this choice to make the meaning of "disparity" clearer.

C) Again, you've re-interpreted the meaning of the argument. I think also that you're not grasping the idea of what it means to strengthen or weaken. Your reasoning on (C) seems to go like this: "C is consistent with what I interpreted the conclusion to be (that US high schools are harder); C follows from that conclusion; so C strengthens the conclusion." That's ALWAYS going to get you into trouble. You have to go FROM the answer choice TO the conclusion, not the other way around.

Start from this answer choice: "in other countries, you can go to university without a hs diploma." That means that in those countries, a lot of high-earning people with university degrees will NOT actually have hs diplomas! That means that many non-US non-hs grads will make MORE than $10 an hour, to keep with my figures -- in other words, the small gap in other countries comes from the fact that non-hs grads outside the US have better skills and are paid better, as in choice A.

D) As you noted, more or less time spent, by itself, is NOT directly related to a whole lot -- and it's certainly not related to income. So this choice is irrelevant.

E) Again, start from the choice and move toward the argument. If the unemployment rate for non-hs grads in the US is a lot higher than it is elsewhere, then it's NOT that US high schools do so much to raise US students & teach them advanced skills -- it's that the NON-hs grads in the US don't make very much. Maybe high school grads in the US and elsewhere make the same $15, and the US non-hs grads have really low average wages because many of them are out of work.

I think that using hard numbers helps make the thinking concrete. Also, make sure you are moving from the choice to the argument, not the other way around, as you determine whether the choice strengthens, weakens, or is irrelevant. Finally, be sure to keep the content of the argument intact as you rephrase it. Hope this is helpful!

Hi, Christian:

Thanks for the detailed feedback. You're right - my original rephrasing was the source of my woes with this problem. I had to read your reply a few times before everything sank in. In terms of going from the answer choice to the conclusion, I found that I just have to ask myself what kind of impact (strengthen, weaken, none) the answer choice would have on the conclusion (in this case, explaining away the earnings gap, and whether it "jives" with the reason given in the argument).

I've noticed that I definitely do read into things too much on CR problems in general, but I still haven't developed a sense as to when to really read into something (because it seems like some problems require it), and when not to. Maybe I just need to do more problems...

Thanks again for your help!

[quote="RPurewal"][/quote]

Too much of thinking where is thge correct answer?
I would like to say B is the right answer. Please comment.

remember that any choice that helps to explain the cited earnings gap, using any evidence other than the purportedly better education given in american schools, will weaken the argument.

choice b does so: it explains the earnings gap, by giving a plausible reason why high-school-educated individuals in 'newly industrialized nations' won't make as much as their u.s. counterparts (namely, because the higher-paying jobs simply aren't there yet).

I still don't get it.

(B) does not imply that American schools are the best at providing their students with advanced skills. It implies that American schools provide their students with the most relevant skills. Not the most advanced skills.

Because of the supply demand imbalance in other countries, students with much more advanced skills may be compelled to take a lower paying job. This would mean that their universities are not providing the schools with skills appropriate to the job market.

The only way this choice can strengthen the argument is if you assume that advanced skills go hand in hand with the most relevant education. In other words, you would have to assume that someone with advanced skills from another country does not benefit from his education if he only gets to use those skills 1 year from now.

Poorly CR question. True the other choices are equally irrelevant.

vish83 - I'm not quite sure I get what you're saying. It sounds like you think B does weaken the argument. Is that right? Ron and Chris are also saying that - B does weaken the argument. Please clarify if I'm reading your post incorrectly.

Also, note above that Chris said he'd reword answer choice B because he thought the word "disparity" was too vague. So answer choice B no longer reads as it does above. :)