Cars Practice Exam 1
Which of the following assertions in the passage does the author support with a practical example?
A. "[D]irect government by the people . . . greatly facilitates sudden insurrection of all kinds by individuals who are exceptionally bold, energetic, and adroit." B. "[A]nd therewith disappears also personality and sense of responsibility." C. "The adhesion of the crowd is tumultuous, summary, and unconditional." D. "[I]t is impossible for the collectivity to undertake the direct settlement of all the controversies that may arise."
Suppose the author were asked to advise a newly independent nation about the form of government it should establish. Based on the passage, the author would probably recommend:
A. a monarchy, in which decisions are made by one supreme leader. B. a representative democracy, in which decisions are made by a limited number of elected representatives. C. a direct democracy, in which decisions are made by all the adults in the country. D. an oligarchy, in which decisions are made by a small group of capable individuals.
Consider that some groups are defined as "cults"; members of these extremist sects generally live communally and obey an authoritarian, charismatic leader. Assume that all cults have fewer than 100 members. This information would tend to weaken the passage's assertions about the:
A. ability of great orators to sway large groups. B. loss of personality and sense of responsibility. C. difficulties involved in convening large assemblies. D. reasonableness of small groups compared to large groups.
When using the term "the sovereignty of the masses" (paragraph 4), the author seems to mean the ability of the masses to:
A. vote in elections that decide who their leaders will be. B. make every decision concerning their governance. C. discuss all the potential consequences of specific actions. D. understand the difference between popular orators and natural leaders.
Which of the following best exemplifies the author's assertion that, according to the instrumental approach, cameras can be used to present information that facilitates timely, accurate responses? A. Photographs taken to record family history in an album B. Photojournalism that produces pictures that tell an amusing story C. Photographs used in advertising campaigns to discourage teen-age smoking D. Photographs taken by cameras at stop lights to catch traffic offenders
x.
Which of the following consequences would have been most likely had the Church ceased to support divine-right monarchy? A. The common people would have fallen away from the Church. B. Freemasonry would have picked up the former political role of the Church. C. Revolution could have been prevented without John's stringent measures. D. John would have included priests in his list of political suspects.
x.
Which of the following facts cited in the passage gives the strongest support for the claim that Portuguese liberals were in the minority politically? A. The queen and her son were opposed to them. B. Several important liberals were jailed by John. C. The Inquisition was still active in Portugal. D. The commoners were politically conservative.
x.
Which of the following facts most strongly supports the authors' image of John VI as resistant to social change in his realm? A. When Napoleon invaded Portugal, he fled to exile in Brazil. B. On returning from exile, he agreed to reforms but quickly revoked them. C. As soon as he returned to power, Brazil declared its independence from Portugal. D. After his return, he reigned as monarch of Portugal for only five years.
x.
According to the passage, if a reader who thinks highly of Virginia Woolf's fiction came upon a biography of Woolf, that reader should: A. use the biography as a way of ascertaining the meaning of Woolf's fiction. B. read the biography as a replacement for reading Woolf's fiction. C. approach the biography as faithfully as people in earlier times revered biographies of the saints. D. hesitate to read the biography, because to do so would be to betray Woolf.
c\x
The author uses the term "culture as commodity" to characterize which aspect of Haitian voodoo? I. The charging of admission at voodoo sessions II. The molding of voodoo to fit audience expectations III. The sale of voodoo trinkets and other artifacts A. I only B. III only C. I and II only D. II and III only
x
The author would most likely favor a college course that: A. emphasized hands-on experience in a laboratory over textbook learning. B. crossed disciplines and combined creative arts with science. C. applied classroom concepts to a community garden project. D. required a semester of studying and living in another country.
x
The author's analysis of image-making rests on the assumption that a capitalist society separates: A. advertising from entertainment. B. private perception from social order. C. diseases that afflict society from their cures. D. free political choice from free economic consumption.
x
The author's primary purpose is to: A. argue for the value of architectural paint research. B. critique unqualified practitioners of architectural paint research. C. provide advice to those who commission architectural paint research. D. present findings of architectural paint research conducted on 17th century buildings.
x
The authors imply that the Portuguese ambassador applauded the French National Assembly because of genuine sympathy for their ideals. Alternatively, the ambassador's action could be explained as indicating that: A. living in France, he was in fear of the new revolutionary French government. B. his life outside of Portugal had broadened his political sympathies. C. he was at odds with the medieval policies of Queen Maria. D. he had no strong political commitments one way or the other.
x
It may be inferred from the passage that Portugal might have avoided the unfavorable attention of Napoleon if it had: A. refused to have commerce with Britain. B. supported the French Revolution more enthusiastically. C. not expelled French aliens. D. not followed Spain into war in the Mediterranean.
x.
Passage 3 (Questions 13-19) News of the French Revolution came to a Portugal that was struggling to return to the quiet order of the Middle Ages after the violent and scandalous attempt of the Marquis de Pombal to bring it abreast, in culture and law, with the France of Louis XV and the Spain of Charles III. The Pyrenees obstructed the flow of ideas between France and the Peninsula; the movement of ideas from Spain was hindered by Spain's recurrent eagerness to swallow her sister state; and in both countries the agents of the Inquisition loomed like lions at a palace gate to repel any word or thought that might question the ancient creed. At the bottom of the social scale stood other guardians of the past: the simple, mostly unlettered commoners—peasants, craftspeople, tradespeople, soldiers—who were fondly habituated to their transmitted faith, comforted by its legends, awed by its miracles, thrilled by its ritual. At the top were the feudal barons, models of manners and owners of the soil; a timid, feeble-minded Queen Maria Francisca and her son John, regent (1799) and then (1816-1826) king—all dependably protective of the Church as the indispensable support of private morals, social order, and absolute, divine-right monarchy. Amid these diverse sentinels lurked a small minority—students, Freemasons, scientists, poets, businesspeople, a few officials, even a noble or two—who were irked by the despotism of the past, furtively flirted with philosophy, and dreamed of representative government, free trade, free assembly, free press, free thought, and a stimulating participation in the International of the Mind. Upon that timid minority, those shocked commoners, those startled dignitaries and Inquisitors, the news of the French Revolution, however dulled by delay, came as an exhilarating or terrifying revelation. Some reckless spirits openly rejoiced; Masonic lodges in Portugal celebrated the event; the Portuguese ambassador in Paris, who may have read Rousseau or heard Mirabeau, applauded the French National Assembly; the Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs allowed the official gazette to salute the fall of the Bastille; copies of the Revolutionary Constitution of 1791 were sold by French booksellers in Portugal. But when Louis XVI was deposed by a Paris uprising (1792), Queen Maria felt her throne tremble and surrendered the government to her son. The future John VI turned with fury on the liberals of Portugal and encouraged his intendant of police to arrest, or expel, or keep under unremitting surveillance, every Freemason, every important alien, every writer who advocated political reform. Francisco da Silva, leader of the liberals, was imprisoned; liberal nobles were banished from the court; Manuel du Bocage, leading Portuguese poet of the age, who had written a powerful sonnet against despotism, was jailed in 1797 and supported himself in prison by translating Ovid and Virgil. In 1793, infuriated by the execution of Louis XVI, the Portuguese government followed Spain in a holy war against France and sent a squadron to join the British fleet in the Mediterranean. Soon Spain negotiated a separate peace (1795); Portugal asked for a like accommodation, but France refused, alleging that Portugal was in effect a colony and ally of England. The quarrel simmered till Napoleon, after conquering half of Europe, reached out for the little state that was refusing to join in his Continental blockade of Britain. Which of the following groups played a role in conserving the older social, religious, and political order in Portugal? 1.Peasants II.Freemasons III.The royal family A. II only B. III only C. I and III only D. II and III only
x.
Passage 5 (Questions 27-31) Of all the ideas for improving education, few are as simple or attractive as reducing the number of pupils per teacher. However, class-size reduction has one obvious drawback: it costs plenty. It requires more teachers and possibly more classrooms and equipment. These expenses can dwarf the price of alternative schemes, such as testing teachers or increasing pay as a means of attracting better candidates. So before deciding to improve schools by reducing class sizes, it is important to answer certain questions: Do class size reductions actually improve student achievement? If so, under what conditions do they do the most good? And most important, how great is the benefit? Existing data, such as records kept by the U.S. Department of Education, show that over the past few decades, class sizes have fallen substantially at all grade levels. However, data from national tests show no significant improvement in academic achievement over this period. But these statistics do not prove that class size has no effect on academic achievement. It is difficult to isolate the effects of class size from those of the myriad other factors that may influence student performance. In order to do so, controlled experiments must randomly assign large numbers of students and teachers to classes of different sizes. Over the years, hundreds of such experiments have been conducted. Most found evidence that smaller classes can benefit students, at least in the early grades, but only under certain conditions. The conventional wisdom about small classes is that they minimize disruptions. They also free teachers to bestow individual attention and to use creative approaches, such as letting students work in small groups. Where discipline is not a problem, then, any achievement gains from reduced class sizes probably derive mainly from the teachers' use of methods that take advantage of smaller classes. But studies have found that educators rarely change their instructional styles to match class size. In fact, even a summer professional development program for teachers did not prompt participants to modify their teaching styles. Moreover, educators generally devote the same overall amount of time to individual instruction in small and large classes. With fewer kids in a class, each child gets a bigger share of that time, but the increase is not nearly enough to account for any significant differences in academic performance. So what could account for the academic benefits of class-size reductions? One likely explanation is that some teachers, who already use methods well suited to smaller classes, do very well when they are actually given small classes. Their improved performance pulls up the average. This interpretation is consistent with findings that substantial performance gains from small classes occur in the early elementary grades and do not accumulate beyond first or second grade. Kindergarten and first-grade teachers tend to use educational techniques that work best in small classes, such as emphasizing hands-on projects and personal interactions. Although reducing class sizes does appear to improve student performance in early grades, no one has studied the costs and benefits of class-size reductions in comparison to those of alternative educational reforms, such as raising teacher salaries. Legislators and school administrators need much more solid information on these relative costs and benefits before they can make sensible policy decisions. Let's hope they get it before spending billions of dollars more to reduce class sizes in ways that improve academic achievement inefficiently, or not at all. The central thesis of the passage is that class-size reductions: A. can improve academic achievement under some conditions but may not be the most effective way to do so. B. improve academic achievement when teachers use techniques well suited to small classes. C. improve academic achievement only in the early elementary grades. D. are less efficient than other means of improving academic achievement.
x.
The practical ideal of democracy consists in the self-government of the masses in conformity with the decisions of popular assemblies. But while this system limits the extension of the principle of delegation, it fails to provide any guarantee against the formation of an oligarchical ruling clique. Undoubtedly it deprives the natural leaders of their quality as functionaries, for this quality is transferred to the people themselves. The crowd, however, is always subject to suggestion, being readily influenced by the eloquence of popular orators; moreover, direct government by the people, admitting of no serious discussions or thoughtful deliberations, greatly facilitates sudden insurrections of all kinds by individuals who are exceptionally bold, energetic, and adroit. It is easier to dominate a large crowd than a small audience. The adhesion of the crowd is tumultuous, summary, and unconditional. Once the suggestions have taken effect, the crowd does not readily tolerate contradiction from a small minority, and still less from isolated individuals. A great multitude assembled within a small area is unquestionably more accessible to panic alarms, to unreflective enthusiasm, and the like than is a small meeting, whose members can quietly discuss matters among themselves. It is a fact of everyday experience that enormous public meetings commonly carry resolutions by acclamation or by general assent, while these same assemblies, if divided into small sections, say of fifty persons each, would be much more guarded in their assent. Great party congresses, in which the elite of the membership are present, usually act in this way. Words and actions are far less deliberately weighed by the crowd than by the individuals of the little groups of which this crowd is composed. The fact is incontestable—a manifestation of the pathology of the crowd. The individual disappears in the multitude and therewith disappears also personality and sense of responsibility. The most formidable argument against the sovereignty of the masses is, however, derived from the mechanical and technical impossibility of its realization. The sovereign masses are incapable of undertaking the most necessary resolutions. The impotence of direct democracy, like the power of indirect democracy, is a direct outcome of the influence of number. It is obvious that a gigantic number of persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work using a system of direct discussion. The regular holding of deliberative assemblies of a thousand members encounters the gravest difficulties in respect to room and distance; from the topographical point of view, such an assembly would become altogether impossible if the members numbered ten thousand. Even if we imagined the means of communication to become much better than those that now exist, how would it be possible to assemble such a multitude in a given place, at a stated time, and with the frequency demanded by the exigencies of political life? In addition must be considered the physiological impossibility even for the most powerful orators of making themselves heard by a crowd of ten thousand persons. There are, however, other reasons of a technical and administrative character that render impossible the direct self-government of large groups. If Peter wrongs Paul, it is out of the question that all the other citizens should hasten to the spot to undertake a personal examination of the matter in dispute and to take the part of Paul against Peter. By parity of reasoning, in the modern democratic state, it is impossible for the collectivity to undertake the direct settlement of all the controversies that may arise. Which of the following statements from the passage most strongly indicates that the passage was written prior to the twenty-first century? A. "The regular holding of deliberative assemblies of a thousand members encounters the gravest difficulties in respect of room and distance. . . ." B. "The crowd . . . is . . . readily influenced by the eloquence of popular orators." C. "[T]hese same assemblies, if divided into small sections, . . . would be much more guarded in their assent." D. "The sovereign masses are incapable of undertaking the most necessary resolutions."
Which of the following statements from the passage most strongly indicates that the passage was written prior to the twenty-first century? A. "The regular holding of deliberative assemblies of a thousand members encounters the gravest difficulties in respect of room and distance. . . ." B. "The crowd . . . is . . . readily influenced by the eloquence of popular orators." C. "[T]hese same assemblies, if divided into small sections, . . . would be much more guarded in their assent." D. "The sovereign masses are incapable of undertaking the most necessary resolutions."
The passage describes an irony of tourist-oriented voodoo, namely that: A. mambos and houngans, although they are human, exert some influence on the loas. B. loas, although they are supreme beings, deign to inhabit the bodies of humans. C. audiences who make the most effort to find authentic voodoo are least likely to actually find it. D. audiences are kept at a safe distance, which reinforces their lack of belief in the powers of voodoo.
X
The passage offers no information about mambos' and houngans': A. genders. B. roles. C. costumes. D. beliefs.
X
After the Napoleonic Wars, the Portuguese people demanded democratic reforms, including major restrictions on the power of monarchs. Together with information in the passage, this fact most clearly indicates that: A. John had good reason to fear that new ideas from abroad would undermine monarchial power. B. the Catholic Church had lost its stabilizing social influence. C. the policies of Napoleon had become increasingly popular in Portugal. D. Freemasonry was coming into the social and political mainstream.
x
Assume that in a particular state, teachers at all grade levels emphasize hands-on projects and personal interactions with individual students. The passage suggests that in this state, class-size reductions would probably: A. be more beneficial than alternative educational reforms. B. improve student performance only in the early elementary grades. C. not substantially improve student performance on average. D. improve student performance at all grade levels.
x
Based on information in the passage, which of the following would be the most likely reason behind the author's suggested academic reforms? A. To pay more careful attention to the relationship between humans and the world outside the classroom B. To encourage students to attend colleges and universities in their home states C. To replace a cosmopolitan university education with one that emphasizes the local D. To give a voice to the particular at the expense of the voice of the abstract
x
Based on the description of performance in the second paragraph of the passage, which of the following occupations is most analogous to professional acting? A. Weaver B. Doctor C. Sculptor D. Massage therapist
x
Herbert Gorman's 1939 biography of the writer James Joyce was written with Joyce's cooperation and published in Joyce's lifetime. These facts would appear to challenge which of the following assertions made in the passage? A. Writers prefer that readers concentrate on the writer's work rather than read a biography of the writer. B. As they grow older, writers fear what will become of their reputation after death. C. Biographies cannot explain the meaning of a writer's work. D. Most readers are interested in reading about the lives of their favorite writers.
x
Implicit in the use of the phrase "betrayal by biography" (paragraph 4) is the idea that biography: A. often explores the writer's personal life against the writer's wishes. B. reveals the true intentions writers had for their works. C. offers no rewards to the interested reader. D. is only worthwhile when it glorifies its subject.
x
In the passage, the author explains that his focus is different from that of most historians because he: A. concentrates on the early twentieth-century theater. B. accepts that actors are "weavers of dreams." C. deals with the economic realities of the theater. D. emphasizes the unequal relationship between businesspeople and their employees.
x
Passage 2 (Questions 6-12) In many ways, readers must be a severe disappointment to writers. Why don't they just get on with it—buy the books and read the words? That's what the business is about, after all. But instead, they want autographs, cigar ends, bits of hair, bits of your time, bits of your life. Fandom, obsequious yet demanding, is not confined to the music business. Reverent souvenir hunting is often deeply installed in those who love art. It seems like proof of proper intent: If you preserve the trivial, then you must truly value the serious. Take the case of Robert Louis Stevenson's hair. When the novelist died at forty-four, he was survived by his old Scottish nurse, who would regularly be sought out by literary enthusiasts. Asked if she had any mementos of the young genius, she would admit to possessing a single lock of hair she had cut from Louis's head some forty years earlier. She was naturally unwilling to part with it, but, well, perhaps by the time the canny nanny had finished trading, there was enough Stevenson hair around to open a wig shop. Many writers learn to handle the idolatry of their fans with a measure of grace, but if you are a writer who has the misfortune to be dead as well as famous, matters are less under your control. "He became his admirers," wrote Auden on the death of Yeats. The dead poet has been ingested by his readers; from now on he will be read, admired, and loved in a different way—owned without opposition: Now he is scattered among a hundred citiesAnd wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,To find his happiness in another kind of woodAnd be punished under a foreign code of conscience. Writers, as they grow older, anticipate and increasingly fear those unfamiliar affections, that foreign code of conscience. In the present century more than ever before, their punishment is likely to include betrayal by biography. And the more famous you are, the more likely that betrayal. After all, you belong to the world, not to yourself—don't you? You can't expect loyalty now. The wider public assumes that writers don't want their biographies written because they don't want the gossip to come out—that mad spouse, that embarrassing disease, the booze, the laziness. Doubtless this element exists (although no more than with other categories of biography), but the main motive is usually larger: It's a defiant attempt to concentrate the reader's mind on the work. The writer's life usually isn't (as it seems to the writer) an especially interesting or instructive one. It is full of frailty and defeat, like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life. Think of Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Robert Lowell, Samuel Johnson. And even the biography that glorifies the life, that styles itself as homage, may be just another, less obvious form of betrayal. What novelist, given the choice, wouldn't prefer you to reread one of his or her novels rather than read his or her biography? You may feel "close" to a writer when you walk around the writer's house and examine a lock of his or her hair, but the only time you are truly close is when you are reading words on the page. This is the only pure act: the rest is dilution, marginality, betrayal—the higher sentimentality. Biography is only sophisticated hair collecting. We persuade ourselves that a writer's life helps illuminate the writer's work, but I wonder if we really believe this. The life offers false and easy explanations—T. S. Eliot's first marriage went wrong, so he took a glum view of things in The Waste Land. Only the work can really explain the work. So perhaps we want to approach and touch the writer's life for a more basic, a more magical reason. Parallels between religion and art have generally been much overworked, but perhaps literary biography has come to occupy the place once owned by hagiography—except that in these disenchanted times, the instructive lives of saints have been replaced by the instructive lives of sinners: The reader now thrills to the bad life rather than the good life. And just as the saint's relics were kept in a gold casket beneath the altar, so now we preserve the writer's relics, although we expect no miracles from them. The statement that "if you preserve the trivial, then you must truly value the serious" (paragraph 2) functions in the passage to: gest that souvenir hunting is more respectable than it might seem. A. demonstrate that the motives of souvenir hunters are superior to those of biographers. B. convey the author's belief about the motives of souvenir hunters. C. explain the way souvenir hunters justify their enterprise to themselves. D. suggest that souvenir hunting is more respectable than it might seem.
x
Passage 4 (Questions 20-26) Photography is a medium with endless possibilities: Anything can be said and any purpose served by it. Objects are discrete, but photographic images join them. By means of a photograph, an exploding bomb becomes an advertisement for a safe. Two premises underlie the presumption in the United States that everything is material for the camera: There is nothing that should not be seen; there is nothing that should not be recorded. Seen through the acute eye of the camera, any object acquires beauty or appears interesting—the most mundane subject constitutes art. The camera empowers everyone to make artistic judgments about importance, interest, or beauty, to assert "that would make a good picture." Photographs can also be useful, facilitating estimates, decisions, and predictions. Cameras implement the instrumental view of reality by condensing information that enables quick, informed responses for a variety of purposes: Video equipment can be used to identify criminal offenders; X-rays can help to save lives. The aesthetic approach and the instrumental approach evoke incompatible feelings about human beings and situations—a contradiction inevitable in any society that divorces the sphere of individual contemplation and expression from the sphere of surveillance and social utility. Picture-taking lends itself brilliantly to both realms. Cameras capture and "fix" impressions from that mythical space known as private perception. Cameras also arm vision in the service of power—of the state, of industry, of science. A capitalist society requires a culture that is based on images. It needs to generate images of new commodities and forms of entertainment in order to stimulate buying. It also needs to gather unlimited information, the better to utilize natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, and produce jobs. Serving these needs, ideally, are the camera's twin capacities: to "subjectivize" reality and to objectify it. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of a capitalist society: as a spectacle to absorb the attention of the citizenry; and as an object of scrutiny to assist officials responsible for governing. The production of images reflects the prevailing ideology of a society. In the U.S., social change is expressed in a change in images. The freedom to consume a variety of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. This narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the constant production and consumption of images. The logic of consumption provides the ultimate reason for photographing everything in modern, capitalist society. To consume means to burn, to use up—and, therefore, to require replacement. As images are made and consumed, the consumers need more and more of them. Images are manufactured at an ever-faster rate. Cameras are both the antidote and the disease. Photographic images add to the natural world the manufactured images that help to bolster a depleted sense of reality. But by so doing, these images further deplete the real world, making it appear drab and obsolete by comparison. The increasing supply of photographic images, never exhausted by consumerist waste, can overwhelm and threaten to obliterate reality. Because photographic images have come to resemble real things to a greater degree than anyone could have predicted, a distinction between images and real objects, between copies and originals, is less and less plausible. The remedy lies in a new form of conservation—a conservation of manufactured images, as well as natural resources, that would provide ecological balance between the real world and the re-created one. The author's main purpose in exploring the aesthetic and the instrumental approaches to photography is to suggest that a new form of conservation must: A. allow ordinary people to make judgments about beauty. B. increase constantly the production of entertaining images. C. solve the problem of the continual proliferation of images. D. develop a coherent ideology to facilitate the task of governing.
x
Passage 6 (Questions 32-38) As citizens of the cosmo polis, the mythical "world city," professors are expected to owe no allegiance to geographical territory; they're supposed to belong to the boundless world of books, ideas, and eternal truths, not the infinitely particular world of watersheds, growing seasons, and ecological niches. Most professors get their jobs through national searches, and although they may have geographical preferences, most are living wherever they can find work. Though the majority of U.S. college students attend institutions in their home states, they are taught by this cosmopolitan class of transient exotics. It would be surprising if the rootlessness of the professorial class did not affect their students who go on to become the best-informed, most-educated portion of the U.S. public. Education certainly ought to broaden horizons, but it can and ought to do more. However we define that more, one thing seems clear: rootless professors are systematically ignorant of a key aspect of integrated life, the life that is, after all, a primary goal of a good liberal arts education. They are ignorant of the values of connectedness to place. This ignorance gives preference to the voice of the abstract at the expense of the voice of the particular. This can only be done by dismissing out of hand the possibility that because moral questions come to us not in the abstract but as concrete, particular problems, solutions to moral questions will necessarily be particular and specific. If we cannot get rid of the causes of this problem, we can alleviate the symptoms. This may be the better course, for it presents the opportunity to keep what is good in both cosmopolitanism and provincialism. First, academia has to overcome its prejudice against the local and the provincial, so that its hiring committees do not include non-native status as an implicit qualification for employment. Such prejudice is dramatized in the case of one individual who, having received his degrees from the university in his home state and having worked at that institution as a lecturer on temporary contract, was told by the department chair that he was "too much a native" ever to become a permanent faculty member. Second, professors should include local content in their courses. Not abstract theories about distant peoples, but concrete realizations about observable communities; not airy generalizations that transcend student experience and lie beyond their powers of criticism, but specific conclusions whose skeptical testing they can perform themselves; not social-science hearsay taken on faith, but evidence weighed critically, firsthand: these form the substance of a rooted education. Transforming the world immediately outside the classroom into a laboratory will tend to erase the artificial boundary between the roles of student and citizen, thereby encouraging the latter in the habits of the former. Finally, academics ought to work to acquire a kind of dual citizenship—in the world of ideals and scholarship, yes, but also in the very real world of watersheds, growing seasons, migratory pathways, food chains, and dependency webs. What is needed is a class of cosmopolitan educators willing to live where they work and to work where they live, a class of educators willing to take root and cultivate a sense of place. These educators could then exemplify in their teaching and in their lives their own manner of accommodation to the fruitful tension between local and universal, particular and general, concrete and abstract. In an age when humanity's relationship to nature is so in need of careful, farsighted attention, academics do a disservice to their students, and to the future of human culture on the planet, if they do anything less. Which of the following underlying assumptions about professors is implied by the passage argument? A. Most of them are generalists, not specialists. B. Most of them lack a preference for particular geographic areas. C. Most of them care more about ideas than they do about actual places. D. Most of them in the U.S. attended college or graduate school outside their home states.
x
Passage 7 (Questions 39-43) To borrow a metaphor, actors are "weavers of dreams"—artists engaged in the creation of the intangible and, in their own estimation, set apart from other occupational groups. Most often, historians have allowed the dreams that actors weave to take precedence over the process of weaving. They have prioritized the moment of consumption over the moment of production. However, actors' dealings with their employers, like those of many other laborers, were fraught with tension. Locked into an unequal relationship with the businessmen who controlled the U.S. theater industry, actors at every level of the theatrical hierarchy struggled for workplace equity. In August 1919, that struggle led to a work stoppage that left theaters across the U.S. dark for more than a month. The actors' strike reveals much about early twentieth-century cultural production, showing how the concentration of economic power and the related centralization evident throughout the economy were transforming the nature of work in U.S. culture industries. According to historian Stuart Ewen, a defining feature of the culture of consumption was the "obliteration of the factory" as the economic world was divided into an unpleasant sphere where goods were produced and a gratifying sphere where they were consumed. Performance, though, is unusual in that it is a labor process exhibited before and consumed by an audience. The individual actor both produces the commodity and embodies it—the weaver and the dream are inextricably bound together. Under normal circumstances, the system of production in theater masks this duality. In transforming actors into objects of consumption, it diverts attention from the economic realities they face. In the 1919 strike, however, the denizens of the U.S. stage were able to exploit their commodity status. The roots of the strike lay in the radical restructuring of the U.S. theater industry in the late nineteenth century. At that time, combination companies, groups of actors touring the country in productions designed to showcase the talents of a single star, began to displace resident stock companies as the principal source of theatrical entertainment. Theater managers began to group their theaters into circuits, a strategy that strengthened their bargaining position immeasurably because they could book several weeks of a touring company's business in a single transaction. In the wake of this shift, enterprising businessmen began to set themselves up as booking agents and eventually as producers. In the reconfigured theatrical economy of the early twentieth century, actors' labor was highly segmented. Most performers never made it onto the New York stage or toured with a combination company. The minority that did had to negotiate the vagaries of an occupational hierarchy that afforded vast salaries for its few stars but meager rewards to the far greater number who eked out a living at its base. Though the theatrical star system created the potential for rapid upward mobility, an absence of job security and frequent unemployment characterized the working lives of most actors. The shop-floor experience of performers was largely determined by their position in the theatrical hierarchy. The position of the stars was analogous to that of the skilled craftsmen at the center of David Montgomery's analysis of machine production in the late nineteenth century. Though these stars did highly repetitive labor, often reprising the same role eight times a week, the control that they exercised over their performances permitted them much functional autonomy. Women from the chorus lines, by contrast, had more in common with assembly-line workers. They were treated as interchangeable components in a complex productive process that stripped them of their individuality. Based on the passage, during the 1919 strike, which aspect of acting were actors able to make use of that was NOT available to most other industrial workers? A. Their role as "weavers of dreams" B. Their role as commodities C. Their role in producing an object in the culture industry D. Their role in the "obliteration of the factory"
x
Passage 9 (Questions 49-53) For the outsider, Voodoo is almost synonymous with Haiti. The result of this identification is culture-as-commodity. The visitor to Haiti finds that the "real voodoo" is kept hidden, while a staged version is offered readily. Yet these various synthetic versions of voodoo are authentic, being but permutations of this very mutable ritual form. The ritual process of voodoo is based on a polytheistic belief system that identifies a pantheon of loas, divine beings who inhabit an intermediate realm between humans and a higher supreme life force. The ve-ve, an invocational drawing made on the ground, is located near the altar. The loas are invoked through drumming, dancing, and singing; mambos (priestesses) and houngans (priests) guide the aspirants, the hounsis, as they are possessed by the loas. Possession, as a central and inalienable "marker" of any voodoo event, is common to all types of voodoo; however, structural aspects and staging of local performances serve to clarify important differences between the more ritual-based versus theatrical forms. Two examples follow. At a voodoo session in Mariani, near Port-au-Prince, the audience was composed entirely of non-Haitian tourists and elite Haitians. The audience paid admission to watch the action from rows of seats or tables. Drinks were served, and flaming torches illuminated the elegant and rustic cabaret setting. Although wild events—such as animal sacrifice and hounsis leaping into fire—did occur, the action was tightly choreographed, allowing for the unexpected to take place (predictably) within a selective dramatic presentation of those aspects of voodoo that are palatable to the foreign audience. Simultaneously, Mariani voodoo confirms the popular expectation of "scary voodoo" and enforces a distance from the audience that disallows real transformation (inadvertent possession), thus affirming the other side of the outsiders' voodoo myth: that voodoo is "fake." The voodoo at Mariani is a dramatic spectacle, with a hidden back stage, costume changes, skillful execution of performances, and vivid use of theatrical effects. In the remote village of Nansoucri, I witnessed ritual voodoo for Haitians only. The hounsis and musicians in the village center sang, drummed, and danced in the middle of a large crowd. Excitement grew gradually and steadily; there was a quality of controlled development during the entire ceremony. Villagers of all ages were participating, and children were actively "practicing" or imitating possession. It was often difficult to distinguish serious possession from play. The dancers seemed to respond to certain possessions with teasing and laughter, and to ignore others completely. Those nearest a possessed dancer tossed themselves about, and called out to the loa. The hounsis did not mingle with the crowd but stayed close to the drummers, facing them. The audience-dancers were idiosyncratic, dancing individually or with others. The ambience was comfortable and casual, with no emphasis on "staging" or narrative structure. Small groups outside the peristyle clustered around gambling tables, and peddlers sold candy and cigarettes. The houngan travels to Nansoucri to learn the "real voodoo" and returns to re-create it. But the essential dynamic of voodoo is self re-creation. Knowledge of voodoo is in the head, but voodoo transmits itself through the body—the social body of the community enacting ritual, and the individual body of the trance-dancer. What is made at Mariani is theatre; it is also a form of preservation. It is voodoo and not voodoo. Which of the following entities are LEAST likely to be seen at a voodoo session? A. Houngans B. Loas C. Hounsis D. Mambos
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Recent technological developments like high-resolution satellite imagery and diagnostic positron emission tomography (PET scans) have refined and extended the camera's capacity to provide information. Which passage assertion does this information support most strongly? A. Cameras can illuminate the private, personal lives of individuals. B. Capitalist consumption requires the unlimited production of images. C. Cameras are a means of appropriating reality and making it obsolete. D. Photography can be used to both control and benefit society.
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Suppose an artist created an exhibition consisting entirely of tastefully arranged collages of mug shots and fingerprints. This exemplifies the passage assertion that: A. pictures of exploding bombs can be used to advertise a safe. B. capitalist societies use photographs to help officials enforce laws. C. any photograph, regardless of intention, may be viewed as art. D. capitalist societies must provide abundant entertainment.
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The assertion that reducing class sizes requires more teachers (first paragraph) plays which of the following roles in the passage? A. It establishes that smaller classes are the most expensive way to improve education. B. It provides an explanation for the substantial costs of class-size reductions. C. It is a conclusion supported by the observation that class-size reductions are quite expensive. D. It establishes the need for more controlled studies on the cost-effectiveness of smaller classes.
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The author claims that actors were locked into an unequal relationship with the businessmen who controlled the U.S. theater in the early twentieth century. Which of the following statements by the author provides the strongest support for this claim? A. "[T]he economic world was divided into an unpleasant sphere where goods were produced and a gratifying sphere where they were consumed." B. Performance is an unusual commodity "in that it is a labor process exhibited before and consumed by an audience." C. "In the reconfigured theatrical economy of the early twentieth century, actors' labor was highly segmented." D. Combination companies allowed theater managers to "book several weeks of a touring company's business in a single transaction."
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The observation that some teachers use techniques that work best in small classes (paragraph 4) is used to support which of the following assertions from the passage? A. Substantial performance gains from small classes occur in the early elementary grades and do not accumulate beyond first or second grade. B. Educators rarely change their instructional styles to match the size of their classes. C. Small classes free teachers to bestow individual attention and use creative approaches, such as letting students work in small groups. D. When class sizes are reduced, the improved performance of teachers who already use methods well suited to smaller classes pulls up the average achievement level.
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The passage assertion that a dead poet is "owned without opposition" (paragraph 3) probably means that: A. the poet is no longer able to challenge the public's response to the poet's life and work. B. other writers will no longer oppose the poet's views. C. readers will no longer intrude on the poet's private life. D. the poet's admirers will buy up all the poet's books and relics. Solution: The correct answer is A.
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The passage discussion of local content (paragraph 5) assumes which of the following? A. Students lack the ability to criticize "concrete realizations about observable communities." B. Materials that deal with social sciences should not be a part of a rooted education. C. There is an "artificial boundary between the roles of student and citizen." D. Professors have traveled to distant communities more often than have the students they teach.
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The single change to the observed ritual at Mariani that would most weaken the author's distinction between Mariani and Nansoucri voodoo would be a situation in which: A. all possessions were outwardly apparent. B. rituals included elements of danger. C. audience members were invited to dance with the hounsis. D. one or more audience members became possessed.
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The story of Stevenson's Scottish nanny (paragraph 2) is probably included in order to: A. demonstrate that those who preserve the trivial also value the serious. B. expose the nanny as a charlatan. C. establish the pervasiveness of the desire to collect an author's mementos. D. demonstrate the popularity of Stevenson's books.
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To fulfill the author's view of an exemplary professor, which of the following subject areas would be most useful for economics professors to know outside of their discipline? A. Mathematics B. Sociology C. Political science D. Ecology
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To overburdened building conservators and curators, the idea of commissioning architectural paint research might at first sight appear to be simply another hurdle imposed by over-zealous bureaucracy. But far from being an imposition, architectural paint research has immense potential. The structural analysis of buildings is accepted as an important investigatory procedure, and architectural paint research offers the opportunity to continue the study of the development and use of a building by its occupants, long after the last structural alteration has been completed. For over three hundred years, paint finishes have been repeatedly applied to buildings using a range of techniques and a relatively restricted range of materials. Changes in fashions of house paint colors and decorative effects are often directly related to technological developments in painting materials. House painters constantly seek brightly colored pigments, which are both inexpensive and stable, to complement an otherwise dull palette of cheaper natural materials. In the seventeenth century, for example, the artificially produced pigment blue verditer was devised as a cheaper and more workable alternative to the expensive pigments azurite and smalt. Unlike easel paintings or wall paintings, where the artists' work has been retained and carefully conserved, architectural schemes are routinely obliterated by successive decorations. However, the accumulation of successive paint layers on architectural elements is now regarded as an important archaeological resource, and as such requires careful management and conservation. Recent research carried out in the interiors of the Little Castle at Bolsover in England illustrates how easily this important evidence can be lost. A sketch design dated to 1618 for paneling in the Pillar Parlor was annotated with details of a walnut graining embellished with black and gold. However, as part of a major restoration program carried out during the 1970s, the architectural decorative surfaces of the Pillar Parlor were "smartened up" and the original finishes were stripped to reveal the bare wood in the mistaken belief that the wood had originally been unpainted and the existing layers were applied in the nineteenth century. This illustrates the importance of collating and synthesizing all existing evidence, which is the vital first phase of any paint research project. The examination of arbitrarily collected paint samples without obtaining a preliminary analysis of the building phases and viewing all documentary evidence is a meaningless exercise. This is the service commonly offered by many paint analysts whose research is based solely on paint samples delivered to the researcher through the mail. A contemporary description of an interior in a painter's bill or a private letter or even a newspaper often provides extremely useful information which is crucial to the planning of a research strategy. A significant paint layer may be more readily dated by a reference in a family letter which states "Today my chambers painted a fine blue" than by embarking on sophisticated pigment analysis. This is not to say that the identification of pigments is not a vital tool in architectural paint research, but it should be used to answer specific questions and not seen as the purpose of the whole research exercise. Furthermore, often the unwary client who commissions architectural paint research is presented with a disorganized report which contains reams of unexplained cross-sections, a scattering of elemental spectra, and inconclusive findings. It is no wonder this new discipline is often treated with severe distrust and suspicion, despite its potential to offer detailed insight into the social as well as the structural and decorative history of a building. What does the passage suggest about the use of blue paint for a house in the sixteenth century? A. It would have been impossible. B. It may have been a statement of wealth. C. The paint would have faded quickly. D. The original paint may have been titanium-white.
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Which of the following best describes the author's attitude toward the fact that the original paint of an architectural element has typically been painted over not just once but several times in the course of history? A. It makes much of architectural paint research guesswork. B. It is what makes architectural paint research such a robust source of information. C. It indicates a difference in status between easel/wall painters and house painters. D. It is something that education about architectural paint research might prevent in future.
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Which of the following findings would most weaken the author's explanation of the observed effects of class-size reductions? A. Class-size reductions in the early grades are effective regardless of whether the teachers use methods well suited to small classes. B. Raising teacher salaries produces much greater improvements in student performance than does reducing class sizes at all grade levels. C. When teachers emphasize personal interactions with students, academic achievement typically improves regardless of class size. D. Academic achievement levels are often low even when teachers use methods well suited to small classes.
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Which of the following passage assertions suggests most strongly that the author is critical of capitalist society? A. Freedom to consume is equated with freedom itself. B. Photographic images make reality problematic. C. Social change is expressed by a change in images. D. Individual perception is a mythical realm.
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Which of the following points in the passage is supported by a concrete example? A. Most professors find their positions through national searches. B. Hiring committees are prejudiced against hiring local candidates to teach at the same university they had attended. C. the world outside the classroom into a laboratory will blur the line between "student" and "citizen." D. Most U.S. college students attend institutions in their home states.
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Which of the following statements best explains Ewen's use of the phrase "obliteration of the factory," as it is used in the passage? A. Industrial jobs were declining in number. B. Industrial jobs produced consumer goods. C. Industrial jobs were hidden from public view. D. Industrial jobs were being replaced by new models of production.
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Which of the following, if true, most weakens the author's argument about the majority of college professors? A. Most would prefer to have a career doing something other than teaching. B. Most did not earn their degrees at the school where they teach. C. Most do not teach in areas concerned with social issues. D. Most teach in the city where they prefer to live.
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Why does the author quote the letter which states "'Today my chambers painted a fine blue'" (paragraph 5)? A. To return to a point made earlier in the passage about blue paint B. To show that interior decoration has been as important to occupants as exterior decoration C. To illustrate the value of consulting documentary evidence as part of architectural paint research D. To suggest the danger of using one type of evidence without corroboration by another type of evidence
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According to the passage, a fan of William Faulkner who buys a pipe that allegedly belonged to Faulkner should: A. accept the authenticity of the pipe without question. B. realize that the purchase has nothing to do with appreciating Faulkner's work. C. investigate the authenticity of the pipe thoroughly before agreeing to purchase it. D. preserve the pipe as carefully as a saint's relics.
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Based on passage information, one can infer that implementing the author's program for conservation (final paragraph) would most likely include suggestions for: A. limiting the use of computer images in architectural models. B. discouraging the use of photography in magazine advertisements. C. increasing police use of cameras to monitor suspected criminals. D. decreasing government support of art that might offend the public.
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