Q17 - Parents who wish to provide

[yjj-1010]

Hi.

I was down to C and D, but then I am confused why it is D.

According to D, formal instruction might not always be a part of a good musical education. I do realize that the stimuli mentions "formal instruction is OFTEN a part of good musical education" and the conclusion wants them to "ENSURE formal instruction." However, we can still suggest that parents who wish to provide strong foundation need to ensure that their children receive formal instruction because even if formal instruction is OFTEN a part of good musical education, by ensuring formal instruction there is nothing to lose and will often end up having good musical education.

However, if you look at answer choice C, it says "there are many examples of people with formal instruction whose musical ability is poor." If this is the case, doesnt this one undermine the stimuli better than D? (Because if formal instruction ends up poor musical ability, there is no reason to ENSURE formal instruction)

Or is C wrong because the stimuli only mentions the formal instruction as a mean to provide a strong FOUNDATION for the musical ability??

Please help me with this one!

Thank you!

[bbirdwell]

Let's take a look at the argument:

Premises:
1. want strong foundation --> provide good musical education
2. formal instruction often part of good education

Conclusion:
want strong foundation --> ensure formal instruction

You're right that the "often" in premise 2 makes a huge difference. Sometimes instruction is part of a good education, sometimes it's not. So do parents need to ensure formal instruction in order to provide a strong foundation? Clearly not.

(A) is out of scope -- this conclusion is specifically about parents.
(B) is out of scope -- what the children want is irrelevant.
(C) is out of scope -- actual "musical ability" has nothing to do with the argument, which is about foundation, education, and instruction. Pay attention to the exact wording and you won't be led into a trap like this!
(D) is exactly right, and as you know, it's because of the "often" in the evidence, which is to say, formal instruction is not required for a strong foundation, and thus the conclusion is illogical.
(E) is out of scope -- being a "good musician" is not part of this argument.

Do you see it now?

[john.as.camacho]

I understood why the right answer was right after the above explanation. I have to mention that it felt like an odd answer choice because it is consistent with the supporting premise. I merely inferred that it could not be the right answer because it repeats the premise and doesn't add anything else.

Formal instruction is often a part of a good musical education.

Formal education might not always be a part of a good musical education.

Knowing the first one, you can deduce to the second. And since the question asks to find "the grounds that it fails to consider", I mistakenly just assumed that the author already knew it. Since the conclusion suggests otherwise, I should have realized my mistake.

[seychelles1718]

I eliminated D because I thought it was a premise booster telling what we are already told in the stimulus. Reading the stimulus, I knew that formal instruction does not always guarantee good musical education ("often a part of good musical education") and when I saw D, I thought it was just repeating the premise.

Any thoughts?

[ohthatpatrick]

This is definitely a weird one. Let's look at what the person two posts ago said ...

Formal instruction is often a part of a good musical education.
Formal education might not always be a part of a good musical education.

Knowing the first one, you can deduce the second.

That last line is not really true. In real life we assume that if we hear "Some X's are Y", then it's also true that "Some X's are not Y".

But that is not logically valid.
Some = at least once
Often = many times

Neither of these quantity terms has an upper ceiling. It is true, for example, to say that "Some human beings live on earth". Saying that doesn't logically commit me to the idea that "Some human beings DON'T live on earth".

Similarly, I could say "the Sun often rises in the east". That doesn't mean that sometimes the Sun does NOT rise in the east.

US Presidents have often been male. True. That doesn't mean that some US Presidents were female.

So hearing that formal instruction is often a part of good music education does not actually tell us that sometimes formal instruction is NOT a part of good music education. In the real world, that's of course what the speaker would be intending to say. But from a precisely logical standpoint, "often" could mean "always".

(D), therefore, is actually giving us a slightly different piece of knowledge by saying, "Sometimes good music education does NOT involve formal instruction." THIS claim actually contradicts the conclusion, which is saying that "Strong foundation (requires Good music education, which) requires formal instruction".