I was on the subway the other day, and saw this ad:
Because every student deserves a safe learning environment, NYC public schools have acheived a 34% drop in major school crimes since 2002.
I puzzled over this for a while. It is clearly a claim and an argument, but I couldn’t decide which was which. Typically when I look for an argument, I look for indicator words, such as “because,” “due to,” and “therefore.” But neither of these phrases seemed ot be an argument. Or they both did.
Simply put, an argument is an explanation made to convince you of the truth of a claim. In classic logic, this takes the form of “If x then y. If y then z. Therefore x=z.” Or, “All humans are mortal. All mortals die. Therefore, all humans die.” In this case, “All humans die” is the claim and the preceding two statements are the argument.
In parenting situations, indeed in most real-life situations, such clear-cut logic is rare. If the claim-maker is using only logic to support an argument, the logic is often flawed, and when the logic of an argument is flawed, the arguer is committing a logical fallacy. There are probably hundreds of named fallacies, shortcuts to exposing flawed logic, many of which can be found here.
In the subway, I tried to parse the statement again. If the word “because” precedes the argument, then the drop in school crimes is attributed to the idea that every student deserves a safe environment, which commits the fallacy of confusing what should be and what is. (Crime does not drop just because we think it should.) If it is the reverse, and the claim is that students deserve safe environments, then the drop in crime doesn’t support why they deserve them. (The statement is just plain bad writing. It creates confusion, and is perilously close to being a non sequitur, another logical fallacy.)
I was surprised by this. Not because the person who wrote this marketing copy didn’t seem to care about the logic of the argument. I was surprised that the writer tried to frame it as an argument at all. Copywriters seem to know that attempts at making arguments often fall flat, so they just let the claims stand on their own.
In advertising, it is uncommon to find an argument supporting a claim, especially on packaging. Evan Bernstein, however, was able to find an argument on a box of cereal. If you remember, the cereal box claimed that it increased attentiveness in kids. Upon examining the box more closely, Bernstein found this argument:
The combination of Kellogg’s® Frosted Mini-Wheats® eight layers of whole grains and fiber work together to keep kids full so that they can stay focused throughout the morning. Fiber helps slow down the eating process and may contribute to a feeling of being full. Whole grains slows digestion of carbohydrates to release energy over a longer period of time.
But this argument would seem to raise other issues. Who says that “fiber helps slow down the eating process,” or that “whole grains slows digestion of carbohydrates?”
Bernstein finds that in order to answer this question, and indeed most questions regarding parenting issues, the answer lies in the evidence, the topic of my next post.
Next Post: Evaluate the Evidence
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Great series. I’m looking forward to the next one.
For this one, I think it’s worth mentioning what seems to me the obvious default interpretation (though the way they word the ad is awkward).
It seems to me that they really want people to hear “Because every student deserves a safe learning environment, I/we have enacted policies to make schools safer. As a result of these policies, NYC public schools have acheived a 34% drop in major school crimes since 2002.” And they probably (depending on the source of the ad), hope that people get the “Therefore vote for me/us again, pretty please. For the kids!”
Am I over-extrapolating? It seems an obvious interpretation to me. Of course, once you assume that this is the argument being made, you get to do the real legwork – see whether the factual and causal claims are justified. Something I’m guessing is the topic of your next post. Can’t wait.
Thanks, Tim. I’m glad your enjoying the series.
I think you nailed it. I believe that is what they were trying to say, but whoever wrote it wasn’t a good enough writer to make that point clearly enough, and instead left us with a non-sequitur.
Unfortunately, I could find nothing backing up this argument/claim, no study referenced. I am still in the process of looking for the source. So, for now, that argument will have to stand unchallenged.
For this series, I chose to use Evan Bernstein’s article as the unifying thread, as I thought it was a great example for each of these posts. If I find anything more on the subway ad, I will definitely write about it.
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