Self-study
Brewer: Conclusion All children should be given the opportunity to participate in competitive sports; Support these activities provide an unsurpassed opportunity to engage children's emotions and so stimulate them to put maximum effort into attaining high athletic standards.
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WTF Kind Of Question Is This?
When a question stem doesn’t fit cleanly into any of the categories you’ve come to recognize, take a beat to make sure you’re clear on its exact meaning. This stem tells us:
- We can expect two viewpoints in the stimulus – Brewer and Polanski – and Polanski will respond to Brewer.
- Polanski’s response will misinterpret Brewer’s argument – there will be a mismatch between what Brewer actually says and what Polanski thinks Brewer says.
- The correct answer will express the version of Brewer’s argument that exists in Polanski’s head.
So we should read Brewer’s argument without skepticism, just absorbing the information, and we should read Polanski’s argument combing for inconsistencies with Brewer’s reasoning.
The Misunderstanding
Polanski’s misunderstanding lies in the difference between
So our answer – the mistaken interpretation of Brewer’s argument that exists in Polanski’s head – will say something like “children should be forced to play sports.”
2.
Polanski's response most strongly supports ███ ██████████ ████ ████████ █████████████ ██████ ██ ██ █████████ ████
a
characteristics acquired by ███████ ███████████ ██████ █████ ████ ████ ███ ████ ██ █████ ████
Practically speaking, (A) should be wrong because it doesn’t match the answer you anticipated. If you had to take (A) seriously on its own merits, the key lesson you should take is to practice easy MSS questions with a focus on proactive anticipation.
For (A) to be right, we’d need Polanski’s essential position to be “the benefits of playing competitive sports don’t last into adulthood.” If anything, Polanski’s claim that forced participation would lead to “an antipathy toward athletics” suggests Polanski does think some characteristics carry over into later life.
b
winning at competitive ██████ ██ █████████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ██ █████████
Practically speaking, (B) should be wrong because it doesn’t match the answer you anticipated. If you had to take (B) seriously on its own merits, the key lesson you should take is to practice easy MSS questions with a focus on proactive anticipation.
For (B) to be right, we’d need Polanski’s essential position to be “we can make kids motivated to excel at athletics without letting them play sports!” A stimulus like that would bring up something like “playing sports-based video games is plenty motivating!”
c
children should put ████ ██████ ████ ████████ ██████████ ████ ███ █████ ████ ██ ████████
Practically speaking, (C) should be wrong because it doesn’t match the answer you anticipated. If you had to take (C) seriously on its own merits, the key lesson you should take is to practice easy MSS questions with a focus on proactive anticipation.
The clearest reason to dismiss (C) on its own merits, though, is to notice that none of Polanski’s claims compare athletics to something else.
d
children should be ████████ ██ ███████████ ██ ███████████ ██████ ██████████ ██ █████ █████████
This captures Polanski’s mischaracterization of Brewer’s viewpoint. Polanski gets all up in arms about how forcing kids to participate in sports would be bad, but Brewer only argues children should be given the opportunity to play.
e
children cannot be █████████ ███████ █████ ████████ █████ ███████
Practically speaking, (E) should be wrong because it doesn’t match the answer you anticipated. If you had to take (E) seriously on its own merits, the key lesson you should take is to practice easy MSS questions with a focus on proactive anticipation.
For (E) to be right, we’d need Polanski’s essential position to be “we can motivate kids without engaging their emotions at all!” A stimulus like that would bring up something like “I was raised in a hyper-rationalist community utterly devoid of emotion and I turned out fine!”