AWA review and rating required

The following appeared as part of an article reviewing summer camps for children.

Parents, if you need a summer camp for your children look no further than Federville Farms. In a recent survey, Federville Farms ranked first in both overall camper satisfaction and in food quality, and second in the variety of outdoor activities. Federville Farms has been family owned and operated for over forty years, so you have nothing to worry about when it comes to your child's safety, and it employs more Red Cross certified lifeguards than any other camp in the state. If you seek the best camp experience for your children, Federville Farms is the best choice you can make.

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

Response
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The review of summer camps for children says that Federville Farms is the best choice one can make for the best camp experience for children. Though the argument presents some evidence to support the contention, it is flawed in many ways. The argument makes many assumptions and has many points of weakness that have not been addressed.

The argument assumes that camper satisfaction, food quality and variety of outdoor activities are some of the main parameters that people must consider in making the decision of sending their children to this summer camp. There may be many other parameters that are more important to consider and this summer camp may actually be ranked much lower in those areas. Some of the other parameters can include sanitation, cost and quality of instructors. Also, the argument assumes that a summer camp owned by a family is safe for children. This assumption may not be true, the family may have a history of law offenders or may be very unfriendly or may be careless in their arrangements for children's safety in the camp.

The argument says that the camp ranks high in the variety of outdoor activities, but just having variety does't ensure that children are going to have a good experience and benefit from these outdoor activities only. We don't know how good, effective and beneficial these activities are. there may be other outdoor activities as well as indoor activities that the camp doesn't have which are more beneficial for the children. The camp employs more red cross certified lifeguards than other camps in the state, but this camp may have a lot more children in attendance than other camps. Hence just having more lifeguards than other camps doesn't mean there are enough of them at the camp.

In conclusion, the argument for Federville Farms being the best choice for children's summer camp is not airtight and has multiple assumptions and flaws that are not addressed. Evidence that the main parameters considered for top ranking are the ones mentioned in the argument will help the argument. The argument can be made stronger by giving us the ratio of lifeguards to children and showing some data to prove that it is enough. Also, feedbacks from past camp attendees about the quality of activities, sanitation, safety and instructor quality can help support the argument.