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Passage One

    Let's address the question of whether speed reading is even a desirable goal. I am an avid fiction reader. Consciously or unconsciously, readers of fiction appreciate the beauty in good writing. Occasionally I will read a passage or sentence over to be impressed by the opening sentences of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, The Dark, and Herman.

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Passage Two

    The school is a complex social structure, existing in its own right yet surrounded by other groups which to some extent control and influence it. Individuals in a school are subject to a variety of pressures both within the school and outside it. What are these influences, and where do they originate?

    There are four major elements which produce and receive influences: the teacher, the child, the school itself and the outer community. These four elements will influence and be influenced by each other at many levels in a variety of ways. The teacher, for example, brings into the school all his own habits of mind, attitudes, beliefs, values, ways of doing things and seeing the world which he has inherited from the society in which he was brought up. These factors will influence the children, the school and the community outside. The child brings into the school everything which he has learned in his family—habits, attitudes, beliefs, etc.—and the teacher and the school will respond to these. The school itself is a social organization with special requirements of behaviour, influenced by the generally accepted values and traditions of education, built up over the years. Both the child and the teacher must adapt themselves to these. The school influences the wider community around it, both by producing the manpower with the skills needed by society, and by shaping the beliefs and attitudes of the young entering society. As for the community, it influences the actual organization of the school through such groups as governors, parent-teacher associations, administrators, etc., and in a less formal way, it is represented by those working in the school, the children, the teachers and servicing staff.

    With all these factors in mind, it is obvious that schools may differ greatly according to the nature of the community which they serve. Every area has its own geographical, economic and historical character which may be reflected in the school. For example, a school serving a community which is dominated by one major industry may need to organize itself according to the expectations of job opportunities which will be available to the children as they leave to find work. A school in a remote rural area may be slanted in a different direction. Similarly, the presence in the neighbourhood of one particular social class, race or religion may be reflected in the school.

(396 words)

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Passage Three

    Young people should have the right to control and direct their own learning, that is, to decide what they want to learn, and when, where, how, how much, how fast, and with what help they want to learn it. To be still more specific, I want them to have the right to decide if, when, how much, and by whom they want to be taught and the right to decide whether they want to learn in a school and if so which one and for how much of the time.

    No human right, except the right to life itself, is more fundamental than this. A person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us.

    This right of each of us to control our own learning is now in danger. When we put into our laws the highly authoritarian notion that someone should and could decide what all young people were to learn and beyond that, could do whatever might seem necessary (which now includes dosing them with drugs) to compel them to learn it, we took a long step down a very steep and dangerous path. The requirement that a child go to school, for about six hours a day, 180 days a year, for about ten years, whether or not he learns anything there, whether or not he already knows it or could learn it faster or better somewhere else, is such a gross violation of civil liberties that few adults would stand for it. But the child who resists is treated as a criminal. With this requirement we created an industry, an army of people whose whole work was to tell young people what they had to learn and to try to make them learn it. Some of these people, wanting to exercise even more power over others, or to be even more "helpful," are now beginning to say, "If compulsory education is good for children, why wouldn't it be good for everyone? If it is a good thing, how can there be too much of it?"

    They are beginning to talk, as one man did on a nationwide TV show, about "womb-to-tomb" schooling. If hours of homework every night are good for the young, why wouldn't they be good for us all—they would keep us away from the TV set and other frivolous pursuits. Some group of experts, somewhere, would be glad to decide what we all ought to know and then very so often check up on us to make sure we knew it—with, of course, appropriate penalties if we did not.

(481 words)

11. According to the passage, it is most fundamental that young people should have the freedom of _______ . ( C )

(a) speech

(b) thought

(c) learning

(d) curiosity

12. The passage implies that _______.                  ( B )

(a) the right of controlling one's own learning is not a human right

(b) some people are doing the kind of learning which they do not want

(c) interest plays an important role in learning

(d) learning is becoming more and more dangerous

13. The current compulsory education system for children ________ most adults. ( C )

(a) works well with

(b) is not liked by

(c) is accepted by

(d) is understood by

14. A child who resists the current system is likely _______.( D )

(a) to be sent to prison

(b) to be dismissed from school

(c) to be all right

(d) to be regarded as a bad child

15. The phrase "womb-to-tomb" schooling probably means that _______. ( A )

(a) learning is from young to old

(b) learning is disastrous

(c) learning is unnecessary

(d) learning is not always helpful

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