Please review my Argument 1

ARGUMENT

Argument - Waymarsh School - Please review and evaluate

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Argument - “Last year the parents of first graders in our school district expressed satisfaction with the reading skills their children developed but complained strongly about their children’s math skills. To remedy this serious problem and improve our district’s elementary education, everyone in the teacher-training program at Waymarsh University should be required to take more courses in mathematics.”
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In this argument the author states that all teachers enrolled under the Waymarsh university teacher training program be required to take extra courses in math. The authors statement is based upon the fact that last year the parents of the 1st graders were satisfied over their child's reading skills but were disappointed with their Maths skill. The argument is illogical and flawed due to the reasons as mentioned below.

To begin with the author suggests that all teachers in the Waymarsh university teacher training program should be required to take extra courses in maths. I fail to concur that why all teachers in the teachers training programme need to take extra training in maths even though that argument states that its was one of the schools in the district where parents felt that their childs maths skill was not upto the mark. To remedy the situation in one school there makes no sense in training all the teachers in Waymarsh university training prgram. If the authors solution is implemented there would be additional training expenses which would be unwarranted for the University.

At the same time the Maths teacher(s) at the 1st grade class(es) may not have the required credentials to teach maths at this level which would call into the authors remedy to train all teachers rather than look into the issue of the specific maths teacher(s) at 1st grade.

Also it maybe that the maths teacher at 1st grade was not able to control his/her class due to which the children were unattentive and not able to grasp the required basic maths skills.

Moreover there may be a case that the 1st grade children in the school lack the required analytical skills to excel at maths. The children are good at reading skills which is a part of their day to day chores but maybe their mind has not yet developed to comprehend the analytical world of mathematics at such an early period of their life.

Another problem with the argument is that the author states that 'Last year the parents of....'. The author does not provide information on the current year or situation. Maybe the 1st graders have now improved their maths skills to the required level which now no longer justies the authors solution to train all teachers in maths. No statisical data which represnts the childrens performance in Maths is provided by the author to justify his stance. The author does not give reasons as to why the children are faring bad at Maths rather then to blame the teachers. There maybe a point where in
the parents of the children are not able to give them the necessary attention at home required to build their analytical skills or the parents are from poor socio-econimic back grouds and were themselves deviod of proper education in life.

To be fair, this argument is not convincing as it stands. To strengthen his/her stance the author should look into other alternatives as mentioned above rather then train all teachers in maths which would be a watse of resources as well as time and money.