1. Issue - A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college.

Education is very important factor in the development of child and it is very important to provide a good education to all the children in the nation for the growth of nation and the betterment of the world. Throughout the years, many have argued for a same national curriculum for all the students in a nation while others argued for a different curriculum as per school requirements. However, a curriculum covering all the topics, if made same throughout the nation will serve as a good standard to provide education and it will also be easy to compare abilities of students.
Currently, there is a huge gap among rich and poor children in matters of education provided to them. Few poor children who cannot bear the cost of education are forced to study in some low budget school which does not cover all the subjects to be taught to a child, while those who are rich send their children to a high budget school which provides a vast number of subjects by explaining them in detail. Primary Education is very important for the growth of a child and this step will reduce the differences among the education provided to rich and the poor to a great extent.
Secondly, it will serve as a common standard for all the students and hence, it will be easy to judge ability of a person based on his primary education which is needed mostly in interviews and college registrations. Many companies have a minimum cut off marks for a student to enter in the company's interview. If a student has opted for some other curriculum where marking scheme is very strict or the course is very tough, he/she would have scored few marks in the school, giving a bad representation about the person to the interviewer. Hence, a common syllabus with same level of difficulty and same marking schemes is very important to judge a person's education in an easy way.
Some people can argue that students with different interests would likely want a different curriculum but since a national curriculum is applied throughout the nation, it will cover all the major subjects which are important for a student for his/her primary education. Finally, a national curriculum will not only serve as a common standard but will also contribute greatly in eliminating the differences in the education rovded among the rich and poor



2. Argument -

The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.


The argument about restoring the time devoted to weather and local news due to complaints regarding station's coverage of local and weather news and decline in the number of advertising contracts and at first seems to be convincing, but when examined with a closed scrutiny lacks certain key evidences which would have bolstered the argument of the Business Manager.
Firstly, most of the viewers complained regarding the station's coverage of local and weather news but this does not completely indicate that the station needs to increase the time devoted to these programs. Some viewers might have complained regarding the content provided in weather and local news; they might not be satisfied with it or did not like the presentation or consider it not genuine or any other case. In such a case, the shift goes from quantity to quality, ie , it means that the program must provide a bettter content in a simplified and fluent way. But since the argument never mentioned anything about the details of complaints, it is very difficult to say whether viewers are not satisfied with the content or the time alloted to such programs.
Secondly, many advertising contracts have been cancelled for the late night news programs. But what were these late night news programs. They could have been Local news or National news, but the argument never mentioned exactly about these late night news programs. Hence, it is not appropriate to make any judgement based on this evidence. Also, there could be many reasons for local businesses to cancel the contract. The argument did not mention a single reason as to why the contract has been cancelled. Those businesses might like to invest their money in a different news company which they consider more profitable. The argument must provide a clear evidence regarding what the late night news programs are and it must dig deeper to find a reason why the contract was cancelled.
It is very important to consider all factors before coming to any conclusion. Thus, the argument must consider the points mentioned above before it increases the time alloted to local and weather news in order to be profitable.



Kindly review both of these if possible. I am giving GRE within 1 week, so I need to focus on my weaknesses in AWA.