Practice+MC+Vinod+Raman+and+Perry

__** Against **** School **__ - John Gatto

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were. Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked whythey feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame? We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap. The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover that all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, I had more than enough reason to think of our schools - with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers - as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?

1) The purpose of this passage is (A) Provide ways to improve schooling  (B) Explain the author’s victory over boredom  (C) Present the author’s caustic views on schooling  (D) Show the effects of boredom on students and teachers  (E) Explain the author’s life as a teacher

2) The general tone of this passage is (A) Apathetic Judgemental  (B) Objective, Equivocal  (C) Pedantic, Emotional  (D) Amusing, Sarcastic  (E) Caustic, Critical

3) The author prizes which aspects of childhood the most? (A) Wisdom, Tenacity, Compassion  (B) Enthusiasm, Endurance, Prolific  (C) Deference, Humility, Joviality  (D) Interest, Endurance, Audacity  (E) Tolerance, Sincerity, Discernment

4) In the fourth paragraph, the author identifies what situation as confounding? (A) The termination of the author’s position  (B) The sweatshop-like conditions of schooling  (C) The adversity faced by the authors family  (D) The fear of reprisal  (E) The conflation of opposition with disloyalty.

5) The author treats boredom as each of the following EXCEPT (A) An illness  (B) A field  (C) Self-causing  (D) Omnipotent  (E) Noncurative

6) All of the following may be found in the passage EXCEPT (A) Rhetorical questions  (B) Sarcasm  (C) Hyperbole  (D) Ethos  (E) Anecdote

7) The view in second paragraph in relation to the teacher’s shifts from (A) Mocking to jovial  (B) Critical to considerate  (C) Earnest to intimate  (D) Awe to objective   (E) Disdainful to <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">reflective

<span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">8) Which of the following best describes the function of the second paragraph in relation to the passage? (A) Examine the role of teachers in relation to boredom  (B) Establish and introduce an inquiry that will <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">illustrated in the third paragraph.  (C) Spotlight the accusatory nature of teachers.  (D) Delve deeper into the aspect of boredom.  (E) No relation exists

__ **Double Talk** __-Rich Bass <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">: (Pages 627-628)

Next to vision, I believe language is our strongest sense. Allow me, then, some time to lament the corporate manipulation of my craft, To one who loves both language and wild country, it’s infuriating to see the two loves pitted against each other, language being used to suck out the last good and vital marrow of wild country. It’s a platitude the big business runs the country, and frankly, whenever <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">writers to battle with the monied interests, we expect to lose more than we win. But we writers like to think that at least we can help shape the future, by creating a purer, more mythical world in which the right thing is done, the right decision is made, and dignity, beauty, and nobility abound. We can’t. If anything we’re losing <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">these battle even more decisively than we’re losing the money wars. Just as the forests, the wild prairies, the ocean, and the deserts are being taken from us, so, too - like an echo, or perhaps a foreshadowing - the language of wild places is being taken from us, insidiously, slyly, steadily. We are being given instead the language of machines, the language of the sick and the diseased. Individual words., used daily in government agencies, cede vast amounts of wild territory every time they are uttered. These words obscure the true beauty of <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">wilderness and the possibility that there might exist a few landscapes that can do just fine without the curse of all our help and knowledge. <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Clearcuts, for instance, are no longer exclusively called <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">clearcuts. The straightforward old Anglo-Saxon word has been replaced in most cases with the sinuous, almost lisping seed trees with reserves, which sounds more like some sort of Individual Retirement Account than a forest. <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Clearcuts are surrounded by <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">:shelterbelts ” - little more than beauty <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">strups designed to obscure the public's view from the carnage beyond. Engineers speak of the road “prism” as they make plans to enter the last <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">roadless cores in benign fashion - the word prism <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">conjuring not only the stability of <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Pyramids but also, more subtly, the friendly kaleidoscopes of one’s childhood. Where are the <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">slaughterous runoffs of spring beneath that word prism? Where are the <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">slumpage and collapse of roads, the sedimentation of streams, the crushing fragmentation of habitat? Prescribed treatment. This phrase is used to describe an activity proposed by the Forest Service or some other agency - and rest assured, it usually involves chainsaws. Implicit in this notion of a prescription is that nature is sick, and we are the physician. That is not to say that there are not places where natural processes (“historic vegetative patterns”) have not become slightly, temporarily unbalanced as a result of our past mistakes and transgressions, <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">more do <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">i think that there aren’t places where we can “manipulate” the forest to bring <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">t closer to what most of us might describe as “health.” But we use the terms prescription and treatment for every timber sale in the national forests. <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">if your goal is to help preserve the sanctity, mystery, awe, and power of wild places, the battle is already half lost every time you open your mouth.

9) What is the speaker’s purpose in writing this passage? (A) To advocate the natural conservation of forests  (B) To <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">publicise a plight between language and nature  (C) A call to action towards corporate <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">libel   (D) A study of language towards natural classification  (E) To define the interdependence between language and nature

10) The primary concern of this selection is (A) Nonchalant disregard towards specific natural terminology  (B) Language is “dying” in concerns with natural description  (C) Forests are not getting the attention they need  (D) <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Emphatic use of language in concerns with forest policies  (E) Escalating Deforestation for Corporate interests

11) The tone in paragraph 6 is one of (A) Veiled nostalgia  (B) Ironic exasperation  (C) Indifferent solemnity  (D) <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">infuriated activism  (E) Civil dissent

12) Bass would most likely agree with which of the following statements? (A) Corporations should be more careful with their diction  (B) Language should be incorporated more thoroughly  (C) Corporations malevolently manipulate language  (D) Our careless disregard of language can hold detrimental consequences  (E) It is important that we maintain a higher level of language in formal endeavors

13) In paragraph 8 the word <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">presciption most nearly means (A) A remedy  (B) A suggestion  (C) An instruction  (D) A direction  (E) A panacea

14) All of the following may be found in the passage EXCEPT (A) Metaphor  (B) Personification  (C) Alliteration  (D) Simile  (E) Hyperbole

15) Bass mentions kaleidoscopes because he views them as (A) <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">A homage to childhood  (B) A novelty  (C) A peaceful memory  (D) An enthralling contraption  (E) A confusing toy

16) In paragraph 5 why is the phrase “<span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">seeds trees with reserves” in italics? (A) For emphasis  (B) To signify it would be pronounced differently if spoken  (C) There is no reason  (D) It is a definition  (E) It is a term

__**Shooting an Elephant-**__ **George Orwell**<span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">( 9 questions)

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat<span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

17) What is the purpose of the passage? (A) To gain a better understanding of the author’s thoughts and emotions  (B) To recount the author’s experiences with shooting an elephant  (C) To promulgate certain social condition  (D) Give insight on the human condition and <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">it’s emotional <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">restictions   (E) <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Tohighlight an prominent event in the author’s life

18)The atmosphere established in the fifth paragraph is mainly one of… (A) Reflective  (B Solemn (C) Patronizing (D) Callous (E) Morose

19) Lines “ I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise<span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him” contains which of the following? (A) Assonance  (B) Anaphora  (C) Amplification  (D) <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Symploce   (E) Parallelism

20) The “tortured gasps” at the end of paragraph 5 contrasts (A) The author’s emotional stress  (B) The crack and kick of the german rifle  (C) The charging elephant and its rampage  (D) The malicious glee of the crowd after the author pulled the trigger.  (E) The author’s immediate call to action

21) What can the effect of the last line of the passage have on the reader? (A) Placid nostalgia  (B) Indignant disgust  (C) Poignant regret  (D) Indifferent satisfaction  (E) Honorary reverence

22) Which best describes the author’s motivation to kill the elephant? (A) An eagerness to satisfy the natives  (B) A need to display his dominance  (C) <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">Bloodlust   (D) The instance of succumbing to the stress of the situation  (E) Fear of becoming a victim of ridicule

23) Which best describes the author’s feelings about shooting an elephant? (A) Immoral and unnecessary  (B) Immoral but necessary  (C) Indifferent and apathetic  (D) An instance of personal decadence  (E) Caustic but jovial

24) The author juxtaposes what two concepts in the line “But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree”? (A) The unbending will of the elephant and the author’s lack of will  (B) The restrictions of the physical body and the limitless potential of the spirit  (C) Mighty nature of the elephant to <span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">it’s forced downfall  (D) Life and Death  (E) Agony and Anger

25) In paragraph 5<span class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">, it can be inferred from the line “they made no impression” that (A) The crowd was unaffected by the author’s actions  (B) The crowd was shocked at the author’s actions  (C) The bullets were able to pierce the elephant’s body  (D) The author has reached the limits of his power  (E) The elephant still remains alive after he had been shot multiple times.

Answer Key