Reading Comprehension Test 56

While they had been young, no event in the social world of Elsinore had been a success without the lovely De Coninck sisters. They were the heart and soul of all the gayety of the town. When they entered its ballrooms, the ceiings of sedate old merchant' houses seemed to lift a little, and the walls to spring out in luminous Ionian columns, bound with vine. When one of them opened the ball, light as a bird, bold as a thought, she consecrated the gathering to the goods of true joy of life, from whose presence care and envy are banished. They could sing duets like a pair of nightingales in a tree, and imitate without effort and without the slightest malice the voices of all the beau monde of Elsinore, so as to make the paunches of their father's friends, the matadors of the town, shake with laughter around their card
tables. They could make up a charade or a game of forfeits in no time, and when they had been out for their music lessons, or to the Promenade, they
came back brimful of tales of what had happened, or of tales out of their own imaginations, one whim stumbling over the other.
And then, within their own rooms, they would walk up and down the floor and weep, or sit in the window and look out over the harbor and wring their hands in their laps, or lie in bed at night and cry bitterly, for no reason in the world. They of two Timons of Athens, and give Madam Baek an uncanny feeling, as in an atmosphere of corrodent rust. Their mother, who did not have 12172the curse in her blood, would have been badly frightened had she been present at these moments, and would have suspected some unhappy love affair. Their father would have understood them, and have grieved on their behalf, but he was occupied with his affairs, and did not come into his daughters' rooms. Only this elderly female servant, whose temperament was as different as possible from theirs, would understand them in her way, and would keep it all within her heart, as they did themselves, with mingled despair and pride. Sometimes she would try to comfort them. When they cried out, "Hanne, is it not terrible that there is so much lying, so much falsehood, in the world?" she said, "Well, what of it? It would be worse still if it were actually true, all that they tell."
Then again the girls would get up, dry their tears, try on their new bonnets before the glass, plan their theatricals and sleighing parties, shock and gladden the hearts of their friends, and have the whole thing over again. They seemed as unable to keep from one extremity as from the other. In short, they were born melancholiacs, such as make others happy and are themselves helplessly unhappy, creatures of playfulness, charm and salt tears, of fine fun and everlasting loneliness.

[passage-header](The passage is taken from a biography of Florence Nightingale who is mainly remembered for her heroic work as a nurse during the Crimean War.)[/passage-header]   The name of Florence Nightingale lives in the memory of the world by virtue of the heroic adventure of the Crimea. Had she died - as she nearly did - upon her return to England, her reputation would hardly have been different; her legend would have come down to us almost as we know it today - that gentle vision of female virtue which first took shape before the adoring eyes of the sick soldiers at Scutari. Yet, as a matter of fact, she lives for more than half a century after the Crimean War; and during the greater part of that long period all the energy and all the devotion of her extraordinary nature were working at their highest pitch. What she accomplished in those years of unknown labor could, indeed, hardly have been more glorious than her Crimean triumphs; but it was certainly more important. The true history was far stranger even than the myth. In Miss Nightingale's own eyes, the adventure of the Crimea was a mere incident - scarcely more than a useful stepping-stone in her career. It was the 91064 fulcrum with which she hoped to move the world; but it was only a fulcrum. For more than a generation, she was to sit in secret, working her lever; and her real life began at the very moment when, in popular imagination, it had ended.
    She arrived in England in a shattered state of health. The hardships and the ceaseless efforts of the last two years had undermined her nervous system; her heart was affected; she suffered constantly from fainting-fits and terrible attacks of utter physical prostration. The doctors declared that one thing alone would save her - a complete and a prolonged rest. But that was also the one thing with which she would have nothing to do. She had never been in the habit of resting; why should she begin now? Now, when her opportunity had come at last; now, when the iron was hot, and it was time to strike? No, she had work to do and come what might, she would do it. The doctors protested in vain; in vain her family lamented and entreated, in vain her friends pointed out to her the madness of such a course. Madness? Mad - possessed - perhaps she was. A frenzy had seized upon her. As she lay upon her sofa, gasping, she devoured blue-books, dictated letters, and, in the intervals of her palpitations, cracked jokes. For months at a stretch, she never left her bed. But she would not rest. At this rate, the doctors assured, even if she did not die, she would become an invalid for life. She could not help that; there was work to be done; and as for rest, very likely she might rest... when she had done it.
    Wherever she went, to London or in the country, in the hills of Derbyshire, or among the rhododendrons at Embley, she was haunted by a ghost. It was the specter of Scutari - the hideous vision of the organization of a military hospital. She would lay that phantom, or she would perish. The whole system of the Army Medical Department, the education of the Medical Officer, regulations of hospital procedure... rest? How could she rest while these things were as they were, while, if the like necessity were to arise again, the like results would follow? And, even at peace and at home, what was the sanitary condition of the Army? The mortality on the barracks was, she found, nearly double the mortality in civil life. 98791'You might as well take 1,100 men every year out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them,'26860 she said. After inspecting the hospitals at Chatham, she smiled grimly. 'Yes, this is one more symptom of the system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men.' Scutari had given her knowledge; and it had given her power too: her enormous reputation was at her back - an incalculable force. Other work, other duties might lie before her; but most urgent, the most obvious, of all was to look to the health of the Army.
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[passage-header]The passage is taken from a description of the life of certain Pacific Islanders written by a pioneering sociologist.[/passage-header]     By the time a child is six or seven, she has all the essential avoidances well enough by heart to be trusted with the care of a younger child. And she also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pinwheels of palm leaves or frangipani blossoms, to climb a coconut tree by walking up the trunk on flexible little feet, to break open a coconut with one firm well-directed blow of a knife as long as she is tall, to play a number of group games and sing the songs which go with them, to tidy the house by picking up the litter on the stony floor, to bring water from the sea, to spread out the copra to dry and to help gather it in when rain threatens, to go to a neighboring house and bring back a lighted faggot for the chief's pipe or the cook-house fire.
     But in the case of the little girls, all these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending. Very small boys also have some care of the younger children, but at eight or nine years of age, they are usually relieved of it. Whatever rough edges have not been smoothed off by this responsibility for younger children are worn off by their contact with older boys. For little boys are admitted to interesting and important activities only as long as their behavior is circumspect and helpful. Where small girls are 57275 brusquely pushed aside, small boys will be patiently tolerated and they become adept at making themselves useful. The four or five little boys who all wish to assist in the important business of helping a grown youth lasso reef eels, organize themselves into a highly efficient working team; one boy holds the bait, another holds an extra lasso, others spoke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava. The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a poke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava. The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a 70490 high standard of individual responsibility, but the community provides them with no 17859 lessons in cooperation with one another. This is particularly apparent in the activities of young people; the boys organize quickly; the girls waste hours in bickering, 21798 innocent of any technique for quick and efficient cooperation.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead(1928)[/passage-footer]

TOUCHSTONE: I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

JAQUES: [Aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!

TOUCHSTONE: When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

AUDREY: I do not know what 'poetical' is: is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCHSTONE: No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning; and lovers are given to poetry, and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.

AUDREY: Do you wish then that the gods had made me poetical?

TOUCHSTONE: I do, truly; for thou swearest to me thou art honest: now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign.

AUDREY: Would you not have me honest?

TOUCHSTONE: No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.

JAQUES: [Aside] A material fool!

AUDREY: Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me honest.

[passage-header]The extract is taken from a book written sixty years ago by a British scientist in which he considers the relationship between science and society.[/passage-header]  The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its introduction into education would remove the conventionality, artificiality, and backward-looking-ness which were characteristic of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointed. So in their time, had the humanists thought that the study of the classical authors in the original would banish at once the dull pedantry and superstition of medieval scholasticism. The 95346 professional schoolmaster was a match for both of them and has almost managed to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull and as dogmatic an affair as the reading of Virgil's Aeneid.  
   The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it teaches a child something about the actual universe in which he is living, in making him acquainted with the results of scientific discovery, and at the same time teaches him how to think logically and inductively by studying scientific method. A certain limited success has been reached in the first of these aims, but practically none at all in the second. Those privileged members of the community who have been through a secondary or public school education may be expected to know something about the elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but they probably know hardly more than any bright boy can pick up from an interest in the wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.
   As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is 44698palpably a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe exactly what they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or not. The way in which educated people respond to such quackeries as spiritualism or 19675 astrology, not to say more dangerous ones such as racial theories or currency myths show that fifty years of education in the method of science in Britain or Germany has produced no visible effect whatever. The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience, and, until the educational or social systems are altered, to make this possible, the best we can expect is the production of a minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and develop them.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: The Social Function of Science, John D Bernal (1939)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]The extract is taken from a book written sixty years ago by a British scientist in which he considers the relationship between science and society.[/passage-header]  The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its introduction into education would remove the conventionality, artificiality, and backward-looking-ness which were characteristic of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointed. So in their time, had the humanists thought that the study of the classical authors in the original would banish at once the dull pedantry and superstition of medieval scholasticism. The 95346 professional schoolmaster was a match for both of them and has almost managed to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull and as dogmatic an affair as the reading of Virgil's Aeneid.  
   The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it teaches a child something about the actual universe in which he is living, in making him acquainted with the results of scientific discovery, and at the same time teaches him how to think logically and inductively by studying scientific method. A certain limited success has been reached in the first of these aims, but practically none at all in the second. Those privileged members of the community who have been through a secondary or public school education may be expected to know something about the elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but they probably know hardly more than any bright boy can pick up from an interest in the wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.
   As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is 44698palpably a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe exactly what they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or not. The way in which educated people respond to such quackeries as spiritualism or 19675 astrology, not to say more dangerous ones such as racial theories or currency myths show that fifty years of education in the method of science in Britain or Germany has produced no visible effect whatever. The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience, and, until the educational or social systems are altered, to make this possible, the best we can expect is the production of a minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and develop them.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: The Social Function of Science, John D Bernal (1939)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]The passage is taken from a description of the life of certain Pacific Islanders written by a pioneering sociologist.[/passage-header]     By the time a child is six or seven, she has all the essential avoidances well enough by heart to be trusted with the care of a younger child. And she also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pinwheels of palm leaves or frangipani blossoms, to climb a coconut tree by walking up the trunk on flexible little feet, to break open a coconut with one firm well-directed blow of a knife as long as she is tall, to play a number of group games and sing the songs which go with them, to tidy the house by picking up the litter on the stony floor, to bring water from the sea, to spread out the copra to dry and to help gather it in when rain threatens, to go to a neighboring house and bring back a lighted faggot for the chief's pipe or the cook-house fire.
     But in the case of the little girls, all these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending. Very small boys also have some care of the younger children, but at eight or nine years of age, they are usually relieved of it. Whatever rough edges have not been smoothed off by this responsibility for younger children are worn off by their contact with older boys. For little boys are admitted to interesting and important activities only as long as their behavior is circumspect and helpful. Where small girls are 57275 brusquely pushed aside, small boys will be patiently tolerated and they become adept at making themselves useful. The four or five little boys who all wish to assist in the important business of helping a grown youth lasso reef eels, organize themselves into a highly efficient working team; one boy holds the bait, another holds an extra lasso, others spoke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava. The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a poke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava. The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a 70490 high standard of individual responsibility, but the community provides them with no 17859 lessons in cooperation with one another. This is particularly apparent in the activities of young people; the boys organize quickly; the girls waste hours in bickering, 21798 innocent of any technique for quick and efficient cooperation.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead(1928)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header](The passage is taken from a biography of Florence Nightingale who is mainly remembered for her heroic work as a nurse during the Crimean War.)[/passage-header]   The name of Florence Nightingale lives in the memory of the world by virtue of the heroic adventure of the Crimea. Had she died - as she nearly did - upon her return to England, her reputation would hardly have been different; her legend would have come down to us almost as we know it today - that gentle vision of female virtue which first took shape before the adoring eyes of the sick soldiers at Scutari. Yet, as a matter of fact, she lives for more than half a century after the Crimean War; and during the greater part of that long period all the energy and all the devotion of her extraordinary nature were working at their highest pitch. What she accomplished in those years of unknown labor could, indeed, hardly have been more glorious than her Crimean triumphs; but it was certainly more important. The true history was far stranger even than the myth. In Miss Nightingale's own eyes, the adventure of the Crimea was a mere incident - scarcely more than a useful stepping-stone in her career. It was the 91064 fulcrum with which she hoped to move the world; but it was only a fulcrum. For more than a generation, she was to sit in secret, working her lever; and her real life began at the very moment when, in popular imagination, it had ended.
    She arrived in England in a shattered state of health. The hardships and the ceaseless efforts of the last two years had undermined her nervous system; her heart was affected; she suffered constantly from fainting-fits and terrible attacks of utter physical prostration. The doctors declared that one thing alone would save her - a complete and a prolonged rest. But that was also the one thing with which she would have nothing to do. She had never been in the habit of resting; why should she begin now? Now, when her opportunity had come at last; now, when the iron was hot, and it was time to strike? No, she had work to do and come what might, she would do it. The doctors protested in vain; in vain her family lamented and entreated, in vain her friends pointed out to her the madness of such a course. Madness? Mad - possessed - perhaps she was. A frenzy had seized upon her. As she lay upon her sofa, gasping, she devoured blue-books, dictated letters, and, in the intervals of her palpitations, cracked jokes. For months at a stretch, she never left her bed. But she would not rest. At this rate, the doctors assured, even if she did not die, she would become an invalid for life. She could not help that; there was work to be done; and as for rest, very likely she might rest... when she had done it.
    Wherever she went, to London or in the country, in the hills of Derbyshire, or among the rhododendrons at Embley, she was haunted by a ghost. It was the specter of Scutari - the hideous vision of the organization of a military hospital. She would lay that phantom, or she would perish. The whole system of the Army Medical Department, the education of the Medical Officer, regulations of hospital procedure... rest? How could she rest while these things were as they were, while, if the like necessity were to arise again, the like results would follow? And, even at peace and at home, what was the sanitary condition of the Army? The mortality on the barracks was, she found, nearly double the mortality in civil life. 98791'You might as well take 1,100 men every year out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them,'26860 she said. After inspecting the hospitals at Chatham, she smiled grimly. 'Yes, this is one more symptom of the system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men.' Scutari had given her knowledge; and it had given her power too: her enormous reputation was at her back - an incalculable force. Other work, other duties might lie before her; but most urgent, the most obvious, of all was to look to the health of the Army.
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[passage-header]The extract is taken from a book written sixty years ago by a British scientist in which he considers the relationship between science and society.[/passage-header]  The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its introduction into education would remove the conventionality, artificiality, and backward-looking-ness which were characteristic of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointed. So in their time, had the humanists thought that the study of the classical authors in the original would banish at once the dull pedantry and superstition of medieval scholasticism. The 95346 professional schoolmaster was a match for both of them and has almost managed to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull and as dogmatic an affair as the reading of Virgil's Aeneid.  
   The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it teaches a child something about the actual universe in which he is living, in making him acquainted with the results of scientific discovery, and at the same time teaches him how to think logically and inductively by studying scientific method. A certain limited success has been reached in the first of these aims, but practically none at all in the second. Those privileged members of the community who have been through a secondary or public school education may be expected to know something about the elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but they probably know hardly more than any bright boy can pick up from an interest in the wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.
   As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is 44698palpably a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe exactly what they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or not. The way in which educated people respond to such quackeries as spiritualism or 19675 astrology, not to say more dangerous ones such as racial theories or currency myths show that fifty years of education in the method of science in Britain or Germany has produced no visible effect whatever. The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience, and, until the educational or social systems are altered, to make this possible, the best we can expect is the production of a minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and develop them.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: The Social Function of Science, John D Bernal (1939)[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]The extract is taken from a book written sixty years ago by a British scientist in which he considers the relationship between science and society.[/passage-header]  The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its introduction into education would remove the conventionality, artificiality, and backward-looking-ness which were characteristic of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointed. So in their time, had the humanists thought that the study of the classical authors in the original would banish at once the dull pedantry and superstition of medieval scholasticism. The 95346 professional schoolmaster was a match for both of them and has almost managed to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull and as dogmatic an affair as the reading of Virgil's Aeneid.  
   The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it teaches a child something about the actual universe in which he is living, in making him acquainted with the results of scientific discovery, and at the same time teaches him how to think logically and inductively by studying scientific method. A certain limited success has been reached in the first of these aims, but practically none at all in the second. Those privileged members of the community who have been through a secondary or public school education may be expected to know something about the elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but they probably know hardly more than any bright boy can pick up from an interest in the wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.
   As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is 44698palpably a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe exactly what they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or not. The way in which educated people respond to such quackeries as spiritualism or 19675 astrology, not to say more dangerous ones such as racial theories or currency myths show that fifty years of education in the method of science in Britain or Germany has produced no visible effect whatever. The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience, and, until the educational or social systems are altered, to make this possible, the best we can expect is the production of a minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and develop them.
[passage-footer]Adapted from: The Social Function of Science, John D Bernal (1939)[/passage-footer]