Are there any fallacies?
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Original Question
Yesterday during lunch my little niece made an argument as to why pop quizzes are not a good idea for both students and teachers. To be completely fair, I feel there's something wrong with it but I can't quite point my finger at what it is exactly. It went something like this:
It doesn't make sense for you to give pop quizzes to your class, Professor Jones. It just makes a lot of extra work for you and makes the students nervous. Students should not need pop quizzes to motivate them to prepare for each class
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Answers
2I've arranged the argument into premisses and conclusion,
P1: Pop quizzes make a lot of extra work for teachers
P2: Pop quizzes make students nervous
P3: Students should not need pop quizzes to motivate them to prepare for each class
C: It doesn't make sense for teachers to give pop quizzes to their class
P3: might be an example of the moralistic fallacy
The conclusion could follow from the premiss, 'Students do not need pop quizzes to motivate them to prepare for each class' as this indicates that there is another way to do it that might not involve the unwanted consequences indicated in P1 and P2.
The conclusion does not follow from, 'Students should not need...'
For it to do so would require your niece to assume that if something should be the case, it is.
This is a should argument (or value-based ). This means how strong or weak the argument is, is based on the value one assigns the pros and the cons. So extra work for professor and nervous students are the cons. What are the pros? Weighing those require a value judgement. I see no fallacies here.
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But pop quizzes do make sense. Whether it causes more work for the professor should be of no concern of the student. Unnanounced quizzes makes students nervous only if they are not keeping up with their work . She claims that students keep up with their work so pop quizzes are unnecessary because they are all motivated to keep up. This being the case pop quizzes prove the student right or wrong. Furthermore pop quizzes have a practical value from the professors perspective. She is wrong. None of what she says makes any sense to me.