Here is my take on this tricky question:
Helium wrote:
A political candidate committed to the principal tenets of a political party may not always explain the implications of his or her party commitment to the voters in full detail. Adele Richardson, for example, is a minor-party candidate in contention for a seat on the school board. She is not likely to inform conservative voters in her district that the national leadership of her party has recently recommended that school curricula be more closely monitored by agencies of the federal government.
Which of the following is not assumed or implied by the passage above?
Notice that this assumption question is asking us what is
not assumed or implied by the passage, not what can be assumed, a sort of reversal of expectations. If anything, the question stem illustrates
the importance of reading and understanding the question before jumping into the answer choices. With that out of the way, we need to find the outlier, something that does not tie into the passage directly or that veers off in a direction not supported by the passage. Since this could include any of a number of distractions, I would now happily jump in and look to find just one.
Helium wrote:
A) A political candidate is likely to be more interested in winning an election than in proselytizing the electorate.
Analysis: This answer takes an odd turn once it gets into
proselytizing. I would expect an official question to rely less on upper-level vocabulary and simply state the meaning of the word, something along the lines of
more interested in winning an election than in converting the electorate to his or her views. That gripe aside, though, the suggestion is that the candidate wants to win more than anything else. To evaluate whether this statement is, in fact, an assumption or implication, we need to consider the
why behind the actions. That is, why might a political candidate withhold information from the voters? Presumably, to increase the probability of getting voted into office. If you were unsure about the meaning of
proselytizing, then you could definitely keep this choice in the running. As a rule of thumb,
never eliminate something because you do not understand it. Look to reduce the answer pool first and come back if nothing else stands out. For now, then, let us label this one as a
yellow-light response. Proceed with caution.
Helium wrote:
B) The candidate of any party is likely to support the policy decisions made by the national leadership.
Analysis: Notice the frame of the candidate in question, namely that the candidate is
committed to the principal tenets of a political party. If that is not game over for this answer choice, then I cannot see what more we would want. Moreover, the answer uses vague, non-committal language in
is likely to. It does not boldly state that a candidate
must or, better yet,
must always support the decisions of the national leadership, so that makes it harder to argue against. This choice is a logical assumption, based on what the passage tells us.
Red light.Helium wrote:
C) All candidates for such community positions as membership on the school board must have commitments to national parties.
Analysis: Speaking of absolute or overreaching language, the
all of this answer choice makes it a dubious statement, and the
must have is similarly problematic. Focusing on the former part, remember, the only candidate we are considering in the passage is one
committed to the principal tenets of a political party. Does that necessarily mean that
all candidates are also committed in this manner? Not at all. Furthermore, are we to assume that any candidate for a local (i.e. community) position has to have ties to a national party? The thought had not even entered my mind until the word
national appeared in the passage toward the end. Before that, all we had to lean on was
party commitment in the first line. Adele Richardson is only being held up as an example of a party-committed candidate, one who happens to have ties within the party that run all the way up to the national level. Since neither all candidates nor national party commitments are required assumptions, this is our answer to the question being asked.
Green light.Helium wrote:
D) Conservatives in Adele Richardson's district do not support federal intervention in decisions made by community school officials.
Analysis: Since Adele Richardson is being used to exemplify a point made earlier in the passage, we need to put a finger on what that point is. The first sentence tells us. With a little interposition:
Adele Richardson may not always explain the implications of her party commitment to the voters in full detail. Okay, so what is she not disclosing? The end of the passage tells us:
the national leadership of her party has recently recommended that school curricula be more closely monitored by agencies of the federal government. Sounds a lot like the
federal intervention mentioned in the response. Finally, from whom is Adele Richardson keeping this information? If you look at the same closing sentence to the passage, you find the answer right at the beginning:
conservative voters in her district. Thus, we can assume that these conservative voters would oppose federal intervention in the matter at hand, and that is enough to see off this answer.
Red light.Helium wrote:
E) Voters in Adele Richardson's district are not fully aware of the policy statements made by the national leadership of her party
Analysis: You can assume that voters are somewhat ignorant of such policy statements, at least conservative voters, given the previous analysis. Keep in mind, too, that the topic sentence informs us that
a political candidate... may not always explain the implications of his or her party commitment to the voters in full detail. If some detail about national leadership is left out deliberately by a candidate when presenting views to voters, then it is safe to assume that the electorate is
not fully aware of all the information.
Red light.If, at this point, you were still on the fence between (A) and (C), it would be a good idea to
look for weaknesses in any part of either choice. For reasons explained above, choice (A) does follow from the information presented in the passage, leaving choice (C) as the answer.
I hope that helps clarify any lingering concerns on this one. Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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