Q3 - Physical education should teach

[ebrickm2]

An inference question w/o an argument, fine.

The correct answer, A, that physical education should include noncompetitive activities doesn't seem to be necessarily required. A false dichotomy is assumed here, and I take protest with this question!

What is to say that noncompetitive activities would encourage the less competitive (this could be a relative element where only the super competitive students are playing and the moderately competitive students are not interested), not non-competitive students in living a healthy lifestyle?

This is an inference, so the answer choice must necessarily be a necessary result or paraphrase of the stimulus, this answer assumes a false dichotomy and that less competitive students will necessarily be engaged in noncompetitive sports if they are introduced.

I want to scream!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I agree that Inference questions ask you to establish what must be true on the basis of the information given.

When the question stem asks you to find what is "most strongly supported" however, try and give the question a little more flexibility. If you have to work very hard to come up with a hypothetical that would disprove the truth of one of the answer choices, it's probably a safe bet that the statement is something that is "supported" by the stimulus, just not something that "must be true" based on the stimulus.

Answer choice (A) is supported by the stimulus, because the stimulus relates the following pieces of information.

1. Physical education should teach people to pursue healthy, active lifestyles as the grow older.
2. The focus on competitive sports in most school causes most of the less competitive students to turn away from sports, causing them to be less healthy.

If both of these statements are true, it would make sense for schools to include non-competitive activities so that the less competitive students can be encouraged to live healthy lifestyles.

(B) is not supported. We are not given enough information to establish whether there are more competitive or more less competitive students.
(C) could be true, but is not supported by the text.
(D) is out of scope. We do not know anything about the mental aspects of exercise.
(E) is probably true, but cannot be said to follow from the information in the stimulus. Anyway, the passage is about encouraging healthy lifestyles through physical education, not about informing children about bad lifestyle choices.

Does that help clear things up? If you still need more help on this one please let me know!

[nazu.s.shaikh]

Just for the peace of my own mind, I had initially chosen B as my answer. Now I'm trying to understand why B is wrong.

We're not given information about students who turn away from sports because of competition, instead we are given information about those who aren't as competitive tend not to exercise as much. Saying that its not as if they turn away from competition on a whole, they just don't keep exercise as much? Implying there is a possibility that they still exercise or participate in competitive sports just not as much as they ought to?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Answer choice (B) can be eliminated because it implies that most children are less competitive.

We don't know this to be true. We know that the focus on competitive sports causes less competitive children to turn away from sports. But we don't know that there are more less competitive children than competitive children out there.

So for example, is the split 50% - 50%, or is it 70% - 30%? There's no way of knowing based on the passage.

Does that help you see why this answer is incorrect?

[perng.yan]

after narrowing it down to (A) and (D), i actually chose (D)...

because it's supported by
"P.E. should teach people to pursue healthy active lifestyles as they grown older"
"But the focus on competitive sports...."
"Having learned to think of themselves as..."

where as it never mentions that P.E. should inclue noncompetitive sports, it only suggest that competitive sports shouldn't be the focus of PE

[perng.yan]

actually.. if we can infer that the author does not think that competitive sports should be the focus of P.E. ... we must also infer that there has to be some activitiy that is NOT competitive.. which is the noncompetitive activities yay! answer choice (A)!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

That's fantastic. You just answered your own question! Sometimes... you just need to hear it out loud.

Great work!

[rachel.zuliniak]

I actually had a bit of a different take on ruling out some of the incorrect answers for this question. I didn't initially pick A as the correct answer because D seemed more fitting. However:

A) I agree that this isn't a perfect answer. However, our take away from this stimulus is basically "physical education fails at its purpose sometimes". Why? Competitive sports. Thus, I think this is a negative conclusion that the stimulus supports. Also, it's narrower in scope than choice D.

B) We know that competitive sports (let's even stretch that to competition) in most schools causes most less competitive students to turn away. Effectively, we know two things. The stimulus specifies "less competitive students". So B already seems a little broad. Also, I think that the two uses of most only allows us to know, at best, that some students are put off by competition.

C) One reason this is incorrect is because the stimulus is talking about exercising enough, this talks about exercising regularly. Maybe enough is only 2 times a week? Or very lightly? We don't know. Another more subtle reason that I think also points to this being incorrect is we know that: un-athletic --> not exercise enough. The contrapositive would be something like: exercise enough ---> athletic. So by saying talented (re: athletic) ---> exercise regularly, would be incorrect at any rate.

D) Mental aspects is too broad for the narrow scope of the stimulus (although this was my initial choice). We know of one thing (competition) that we can call a mental aspect. If it takes this much work to make the answer fit, it should be out.

E) Totally off. Why couldn't we teach people that as adults? We don't really know that it's "dangerous" per se either or that teaching about it would be a good solution and so on.

[DimitriosC65]

I understand option B is extreme in that there is no information about the whole population of students in the stimulus (only about the less competitive students).
However, If option B stated "Competition causes most of the less competitive students to turn away from sports" would that be a fair inference from the stimulus? For example is it fair to assume that competition, in general, equates to "competitive sports" in particular?

[JuicyL547]

Saying that it's not like they turn away from competition in general, they simply do not prolong physical activity as much (see this)? Having in mind, is it possible that they continue to engage in or engage in competitive sports only to the extent they should?

[EmillyR966]

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