Yesterday in my gym class, the teacher said something that sounded to me like an informal fallacy, but I wasn't sure:
One girl was complaining that a person who scores the most goals in soccer should not get a higher grade than someone who puts in the same effort at scoring, but couldn't score because she has less athletic ability. "I try just as hard as she does, but she is an athletic person, scoring comes to her easily, she's been playing for years!! How come she gets a higher grade than I do just because she scored more goals than I did even though I tried just as hard??" ..The teacher replied to her by saying: "Would you consider it unfair if a math teacher gave someone who answered a math question on a test correctly a higher score than someone who tried to solve it but wasn't able to? The person who solved the question should get the credit, right?
The girl who asked the question seemed confused, and was at a loss as to how to answer. The teacher's reponse kind of reminded me of the "equivocation" we had just been discussing in class, and I was wondering, was the teacher's response an informal fallcy in that she compared two things as being the same (which are not) so as to give her a greater advantage and to justify her grading system??
I felt bad for the girl who asked..and I was also wondering how someone should answer back to something like that?? <--- Most important part of my question
Isn't part of an informal fallcy is that you can't answer back (you know it doesn't sound right, but you don't know why, and therefore you cannot refute it) ???