Self-paced
Conclusion The current proposal to give college students a broader choice in planning their own courses of study should be abandoned. ███ ████████ ███ ███ ██████████ ███ ████████ ████ █████ ██ ██████████ ██ ██████ ████ ████████████ ███ ████████████ ████ ██ █████ ████████ ████ ███████ █████ █████ ████ ███████ █████████ █ ██████ ███ ██████████ ███████ ███ ██████ ██ ████████ ████ ████████ ████████ ███████ ██████ ████ █████████ █ ███████ ████████████ ██ ██████ ███ ████████████ ████████████
Flawed Argument: Source Attack
The argument concludes that we should abandon a proposal to broaden students' choice in planning their course of study. Why should we abandon the proposal? Because the students who support it are the worst: they'll never be satisfied, they procrastinate on declaring a major, they fail courses, and they don't care about grades or intellectual achievement.
The issue is, no matter how reprehensible these students' behavior, none of this is actually relevant to the conclusion. The argument doesn't address the merits of the proposal at all. It just criticizes the proposal's supporters. This is a classic source attack, or ad hominem argument that makes personal attacks instead of actually addressing the issue.
16.
A flaw in the argument ██ ████ ██ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████
a
avoids the issue ██ ████████ ██ ██████████ ██ ███ ████████
The conclusion is about whether a particular proposal should be abandoned, but the argument doesn't address the merits of the proposal at all—it avoids the issue. Instead, it criticizes the supporters of that proposal, a flawed method of argument that doesn't provide real support.
b
argues circularly by ████████ ███ ██████████ ██ ████ ██ ███████ ███ ████████
The argument's conclusion is that we should abandon a particular proposal. To make this a circular argument, we would need the argument to assume or state the proposal should be abandoned in the premises as well. But the premises just focus on attacking students; although this isn't actually useful support, it's still distinct from the conclusion.
c
fails to define ███ ████████ ████ ███████████████
The argument doesn't specifically define "satisfied," but that's not a flaw. Firstly, "satisfied" isn't actually a particularly critical term—it's used in just one of several attacks on the students. Secondly, the term doesn't need definition. There's no ambiguous meaning that the argument exploits.
d
distorts the proposal █████████ ██ █████████
As far as we can tell, it looks like the argument represents the proposal pretty fairly. "Giving students more choice in planning their course of study" isn't an obvious strawman; there's no reason for us to assume it's a distortion.
e
uses the term █████████████ ███████████
The argument refers to