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  3. Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Terti

Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Terti

游客2024-01-12  18
问题 Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. Recently another anthropologist, Dr. Karp, visited the group of islands that includes Tertia and used the interview-centered method to study child-rearing practices. In the interviews that Dr. Karp conducted with children living in this group of islands, the children spent much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. Dr. Karp decided that Dr. Field’s conclusion about Tertian village culture must be invalid. Some anthropologists recommend that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
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答案     In this article regarding the children-rearing culture in Tertia, the author claims that the research team led by Dr. Karp found out children are not raised by the village because they spent more time talking about their parents. This finding, in contradiction with what Dr. Field, another noted anthropologist, discovered 20 years ago using an observation-centered approach, suggests that interview-based technique is more appropriate in studying child-rearing cultures not only in Tertia but also elsewhere. Although the lines of reasoning in this article seem to be fine at first glance, close scrutiny reveals a series of unsubstantiated assumptions that demand answers to fully evaluate the claim. Until some critical questions can be properly answered, we cannot conclude that the approach adopted by Dr. Karp is superior to what Dr. Field used 20 years ago.
    To begin with, we must ask if spending more time talking about child’s parents means the child must be raised by them. Apparently, this assumption made by Dr. Karp without providing firm evidence might not hold true because talking about parents may simply arise from the fact that parents are being dearly missed by their children. A more specific piece of information that could elucidate the role of parents in Tertia child-rearing culture may be directly asking how much time a child’s parents usually spend with him or her. If it turns out that parents spend little time with the children, it means child-rearing must be achieved collectively through the entire village. Nevertheless, the role of parents in raising children in Tertia could be strengthened if parents are found to spend a substantial amount of time with the kids.
    Even if we acknowledge the validity of Dr. Karp’s assessment today that children are reared by their parents instead of the entire village, it remains unclear whether this discovery necessarily invalidates previous findings by Dr. Field. The main reason is that Dr. Field conducted his research 20 years ago. Since then, the island culture could have undergone substantial changes and the child-rearing style has migrated from communal to purely parental. To fully understand the island culture 20 years ago, researchers need to resort to historical documents and/or conducting interviews with those who have been living on the island for more than 20 years. If the documents and the interviewee all pointed to a change in the island culture over the past two decades, Dr. Field’s original conclusion would still hold water. Conversely, if no significant cultural shift has occurred on this island, then Dr. Field’s argument would be weakened.
    Finally, granted that Dr. Field’s conclusion regarding Tertia’s culture proved to be wrong in light of the new discovery by Dr. Karp, we need to ask if one can conclude that observational approach is not as effective as in-person interviews based on one case in the study of island culture of Tertia. Perhaps the applicability of interview-centered approach is a peculiar case on the island of Tertia, whereas in other island cultures interviews may be hard to conduct or aboriginal people could be reluctant to share their cultural information. If this is the case, Dr. Karp’s argument would clearly be weakened. However, if new information suggests common similarities between Tertia and other island cultures, the interview-based approach is perhaps indeed more superior.
    To summarize, it remains to be seen whether interview is more effective than observations in studying the child-rearing traditions on islands such as Tertia, but we cannot effectively evaluate this argument because Dr. Karp has not provided sufficient amount of information to answer those important questions raised above. (592 words)
解析     本题是GRE考试中高频的经典Argument题目，它的逻辑导图如下所示：
    Karp发现小孩更多谈论自己亲生父母→Karp结论：小孩是父母养大的+20年前Field的观察结论→Field结论有误→Field的方法不好，Karp的方法更好
    这篇文章之所以成为经典，一方面是因为出现的次数多(Assumption、Evidence和Question三类写作指令都有出现)，另一方面是它涵盖了Argument考试中一个非常经典的逻辑问题：时间不变，这也成为本文的第二段。
    在分析这两点之前，我们还需要考虑Karp本身的结论，也即小孩究竟是不是父母带大的。这里作者(Karp博士本人)假设小孩访谈中更多讨论他们的父母等于和父母的相处时间更多，但我们不难设想另一种场景：小孩可能恰恰是因为与父母的相处时间太短，而更多表达出对于父母的思念。这一段另一个可以讨论的点是，我们不知道访谈是如何进行的，调查者有没有提出带有暗示性的问题，如果问题本身具有倾向性，那么受访者更多讨论父母也许只是由于调查者的缘故。
    接着我们再来看本题所呈现的经典逻辑问题——时间不变原则。在很多Argument的题目当中，作者会将过去发生的事情作为证据来推导现在的结论。例如本题就是在尝试解释20年前Field博士的结论和今天Karp博士的结论之间的矛盾，并将其解读为20年前的结论是错的。碰到这种论证我们可以马上思考：有无可能当地的习俗随着时间发生了变化?也即20年前小孩确实由全村带大，但是在20年间因为种种原因(也许是和外界社会的接触)导致当地的育儿文化发生了变化，小孩由父母来带了。推而广之，如果一个题目当中提到了过去的现象／统计数据／调查结果，我们也可以思考随着时间的变迁这一结论是否在如今也适用。
    最后一段，我们在假设Karp博士的结论正确、Field博士20年前的结论不正确的前提下，再分析作者的一个拓展逻辑：我们能否从一个岛屿的案例推出在所有岛屿的结论?很显然，为了让这个答案是“可以”，其背后需要的假设是各岛屿之间的文化是相似的，但实际情况可能并非如此。不妨设想如果一个岛屿无法或者不愿意与研究者沟通，那么访谈可能会一无所获，进而使用观察的方法或许会更有效。
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