TA: Enthymeme practice--TEACHER CHEATING!

As a citation note most all of this argument is based from the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I’m working on analyzing arguments in the format of an enthymeme (using a great example I might add) and expanding it to what I might do if this were a paper I were to write.

Enthymeme: Imposing penalties and benefits for schools that attain certain scores on issued standardized tests extinguishes student’s learning because having these incentives breeds cheating from both teachers and students.

The implicit argument here is that anything which fosters teacher and student cheating will also stagnate student’s learning. This is a solid assumption which would click with the target audience; the specific audience being the CEO of the public school system of the area. This same enthymeme could also be expanded to use with teachers however it is more effective to persuade those who can change the actual test policies. The reasoning of the argument is typical in that most people believe that cheating hurts students more than it does them good. I would have to construct an argument which included sufficient information on the subject with accurate information (for instance utilizing various studies which have been done on the effect of teacher cheating in Chicago, etc.). I’m not sure to what extent this is a current problem in Provo schools but it has been in a problem in Chicago and I imagine in many other places. I would have to do a lot of research to make sure which issues are relevant and which are not. For instance giving $25,000 to the teachers who have high scoring students will probably not be an issue today but there will be other more relevant incentives that ought to be looked at.