Talbert: Chess is beneficial for school-age children. It is enjoyable,

Question

Talbert: Chess is beneficial for school-age children. It is enjoyable, encourages foresight and logical thinking, and discourages carelessness, inattention, and impulsiveness. In short, it promotes mental maturity.
Sklar: My objection to teaching chess to children is that it diverts mental activity from something with societal value, such as science, into something that has no societal value.

Talbert’s and Sklar’s statements provide the strongest support for holding that they disagree with each other over whether

(A) chess promotes mental maturity
(B) many activities promote mental maturity just as well as chess does
(C) chess is socially valuable and science is not
(D) children should be taught to play chess
(E) children who neither play chess nor study science are mentally immature

Source: LSAT

KarishmaB · Accepted Answer

Talbert: 
Chess is good for kids.
It promotes mental maturity.

Sklar: 
Don't teach chess to children.
It diverts them from societal value (e.g. science) to non societal value.

The question is this: On which point do the two people disagree? Hold opposing views?

Talbert says that chess is good for kids (implying that they should be taught chess). Sklar says kids should not be taught chess (He does not say that it is not good for them. He just says that it distracts them from science). So the point on which they don't agree is whether kids should be taught chess. This is (D)

(A) chess promotes mental maturity
Sklar does not oppose this.

(B) many activities promote mental maturity just as well as chess does
No one says this.

(C) chess is socially valuable and science is not
Sklar says that chess is not socially valuable. Talbert does not talk about this.

(E) children who neither play chess nor study science are mentally immature
No one says this.

Answer (D)

shrikant1512 · Answer

Ans :- D
A:- both agrees chess promotes mental activity
B:- other activities , out of scope
C:- Talbert is saying nothing about social value of chess. Sklar is saying chess is not socially valuable but science is.
D:- Talbert supports this statement while sklar opposes
E:- out of scope

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anse · Answer

I am confused with the question itself. What does the question mean ? Can anyone help ?

ashutoshbhole · Answer

I found it difficult to understand as which part of the sentence says Sklar oppses chess  . 
IMO  (C) chess is socially valuable and science is not . is more appropriate, as the Sklar says it has focuses on science than from societal value. And the Talbert says the opposite.

TheNightKing · Answer

I was inclined towards C actually but D is right. S begins his statement with "My objection to teaching chess is..." and T clearly supports. So they both disagree on whether to teach Chess or not

David nguyen · Answer

Wording is playing such an important role. Under time pressure, I picked A because I though Sklar objected by stating that teaching chess to children diverts  mental maturity  from something with societal value.

Sklar was talking about  mental activities , while Talbert was talking about  mental maturity . They neither agree nor disagree with each other on both.

Sklar straight-out objected to Tablber's reasoning by stating that "Don't teach the kid". I don't know how I missed this part. Terrible mistake.

VerbalBot · Answer

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Talbert: Chess is beneficial for school-age children. It is enjoyable,

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