OFFICIAL EXPLANATION


B

Step 1: Identify the Question Type

The word “weaken” in the stem clearly indicates a Weaken question.

Step 2: Untangle the Stimulus

The parents conclude that poor motivation by schools causes poor attendance by students and that increasing students’ learning will boost their attitudes, thus making them more likely to regularly attend school.

Step 3: Predict the Answer

Notice that the parents’ argument is essentially causal in nature. According to the parents, the cause is poor motivation, and the effect is poor attendance. Whenever you’re asked to weaken a causal argument, always consider the three classic alternative explanations: (1) reverse the cause and effect (“poor attendance causes poor motivation”), (2) find an alternative cause for the effect (“anything other than poor motivation would cause poor attendance”), or (3) chalk it up to coincidence (“whatever the cause of the poor attendance, it isn’t poor motivation”). You may not know exactly what the right answer will say, but you can expect it to do one of these three things.

Step 4: Evaluate the Choices

(B) posits that the author has confused a cause with an effect—that bad attendance causes bad motivation. That’s reversal of causality, one of the classic weakeners. (B) is the correct answer. (A) suggests that parents can be vital to the development of motivation, but this has no direct link to attendance, so it doesn’t weaken the argument. (C) is a 180. It agrees with the parents’ position that a stricter policy will not lead to increased learning, the very position you are asked to weaken, so it doesn’t have any effect; the parents aren’t looking for the school to tighten attendance policies, so finding out that such tightening won’t increase their motivation does nothing to the parents’ argument. (D) introduces the idea of accepting responsibility, which sounds like a good thing overall but has no direct bearing on improving attendance. Finally, (E) mentions that unmotivated students have poorer performance, but the parents are only interested in ways to get students to improve their attendance, not their performance in school. Choice (B) is correct.
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