Question:
Argument:
"Introducing mandatory coding courses in schools will significantly improve students' problem-solving abilities."
Question:
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
Argument:
"Introducing mandatory coding courses in schools will significantly improve students' problem-solving abilities."
Question:
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
Show Hint
When weakening an argument, target the causal link. Show that the proposed cause does not lead to the predicted effect—or that the effect can occur without the cause.
Updated On: Jul 4, 2026
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Approach Solution - 1
Approach: To weaken a causal claim, attack the bridge, not the bricks. The argument's hidden bridge is "coding leads to better general problem-solving." The best weakener saws through that bridge.
Step 1 — Strip the argument. Premise: schools make coding mandatory. Conclusion: students' problem-solving ability improves significantly. Assumption: coding specifically and causally produces transferable problem-solving gains.
Step 2 — Decide the line of attack. Two clean ways to cut the bridge:
1. Show coding produces no measurable problem-solving gain, or
2. Show any gain is due to something else (general practice, motivated students), not coding as such.
Step 3 — Pick the sharpest weakener. A controlled comparison does the job cleanly: "Students who take coding courses perform no better on general problem-solving assessments than comparable students who take traditional maths or logic courses." This denies that coding adds any unique problem-solving benefit, so the conclusion collapses.
Why weaker-looking choices fail: "Coding is hard to teach" — about feasibility, not effect. "Many jobs need coding" — strengthens relevance, irrelevant to problem-solving. "Some students dislike coding" — attitude, not capability. Only the no-better-than-controls finding breaks the causal claim.
\[ \boxed{\text{Weakener: coding students do no better at problem-solving than maths/logic students.}} \]
Step 1 — Strip the argument. Premise: schools make coding mandatory. Conclusion: students' problem-solving ability improves significantly. Assumption: coding specifically and causally produces transferable problem-solving gains.
Step 2 — Decide the line of attack. Two clean ways to cut the bridge:
1. Show coding produces no measurable problem-solving gain, or
2. Show any gain is due to something else (general practice, motivated students), not coding as such.
Step 3 — Pick the sharpest weakener. A controlled comparison does the job cleanly: "Students who take coding courses perform no better on general problem-solving assessments than comparable students who take traditional maths or logic courses." This denies that coding adds any unique problem-solving benefit, so the conclusion collapses.
Why weaker-looking choices fail: "Coding is hard to teach" — about feasibility, not effect. "Many jobs need coding" — strengthens relevance, irrelevant to problem-solving. "Some students dislike coding" — attitude, not capability. Only the no-better-than-controls finding breaks the causal claim.
\[ \boxed{\text{Weakener: coding students do no better at problem-solving than maths/logic students.}} \]
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Approach Solution -2
Specificity test: The conclusion claims coding specifically drives better problem-solving, so the sharpest attack is to show that "specifically" is false — that any general skill-building class would do just as well. If matched groups of students who take a plain maths or logic course score the same as students who take coding, on tests of general problem-solving, then coding has no special power of its own; whatever gain shows up could come from any rigorous course. That directly denies the load-bearing word the whole conclusion depends on.
Cost, staffing difficulty, and student enjoyment never address whether coding's effect is specific to coding — they could all be true while coding still uniquely builds problem-solving, so they cannot weaken the claim as sharply as removing its specificity does.
\[ \boxed{\text{Coding students score no better than maths/logic students - the claim's specificity collapses.}} \]
Cost, staffing difficulty, and student enjoyment never address whether coding's effect is specific to coding — they could all be true while coding still uniquely builds problem-solving, so they cannot weaken the claim as sharply as removing its specificity does.
\[ \boxed{\text{Coding students score no better than maths/logic students - the claim's specificity collapses.}} \]
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