The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
“Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee — a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course.”
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
‘A recent graduate of Easy Read’.
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The statement above is the meat of the argument. It assumes that all employees at Acme Publishing Company are slow-readers who cannot handle reading large documents in a reasonable amount of time. However, this assumption may be false. Acme’s personnel director may have simply misread a memo sent to him. The memo was intended for the president of Acme Publishing Company. The memo described a training program that the personnel director wanted the president to approve. The memo did not indicate that the training program would directly benefit the president. Perhaps the president was too busy to read the memo, or perhaps he simply did not understand it. If the president had felt that the training program was a good idea, he could have asked his vice president if he would be willing to undertake the training. The vice president could have then discussed the president’s concerns with the personnel director. The vice president could have presented the president with a cost-benefit analysis of the training program. If the vice president concluded that the training program would be beneficial to Acme, the president could have approved the training program. The personnel director could have then arranged for all employees to take the Easy Read course.
If the personnel director had made an honest mistake in assuming that the CEO was uninterested in the training program, he should not have recommended it to the CEO. The personnel director should have checked with the vice president before presenting his recommendation to the CEO. The personnel director could have sent a memo to the vice president, asking the vice president to submit a cost-benefit analysis of the training program. If the vice president had determined that the training program would be beneficial to Acme, the personnel director could have proceeded with disseminating the training program.
The personnel director’s recommendation suggests that employees at Acme Publishing Company are slow-readers who cannot read large documents in a reasonable amount of time. He assumes that all employees at Acme are slow-readers, but he does not provide any evidence to support this assumption. If the president had read the personnel director’s memo, he should not have assumed that the training program would benefit all employees. He could have simply asked his vice president, who could have submitted his cost-benefit analysis of the training. The vice president could have concluded that the training program would be beneficial to Acme, and the president could have approved the training program. If the vice president had determined that the training program would not be beneficial to Acme, the president might have chosen to reject the training program.
If the personnel director had included some evidence to support his claim that all employees at Acme Publishing Company are slow-readers, he may have persuaded the president to approve the training program. Also, if the president had read the personnel director’s memo, he may have written a memo to the personnel director. The personnel director could then have clarified his misunderstanding with the president. The personnel director could have written a memo to the vice president, asking the vice president to submit a cost-benefit analysis of the training program. The president could then have approved the training program, and the vice president could have distributed the training program to all employees. If the vice president had determined that the training program would be beneficial to Acme, the president could have approved the training program. If the vice president had determined that the training program would not benefit Acme, the president could have rejected the training program.
The personnel director’s argument assumes that all employees at Acme Publishing Company are slow-readers who cannot handle reading large documents in a reasonable amount of time. However, this assumption may be false. The personnel director may have simply misread a memo sent to him. The memo was intended for the president of Acme Publishing Company. The memo described a training program that the personnel director wanted the president to approve. The memo did not indicate that the training program would directly benefit the president. Perhaps the president was too busy to read the memo, or perhaps he simply did not understand it. If the president had felt that the training program was a good idea, he could have asked his vice president if he would be willing to undertake the training. The vice president could have then discussed the president’s concerns with the personnel director. The vice president could have presented the president with a cost-benefit analysis of the training program. If the vice president concluded that the training program would be beneficial to Acme, the president could have approved the training program. The personnel director could have then arranged for all employees to take the Easy Read course.