The Little Blue Reasoning Book - Brandon Royal [77]
Choice C is a distorted meaning. Distortions are most often created by the use of extreme or categorical or absolute-type wordings. Here the word “only” signals a potential distortion. The author would likely agree that high scholastic achievement is a possible requirement for becoming educated, but not a sufficient condition in and of itself. In fact, the author really doesn’t mention scholastic achievement, so we might classify it as being out of scope if we did not happen to focus initially on the absolute-type wording.
Question 3
Choice B. This is an inference question. The challenge is to find an answer that isn’t explicitly mentioned in the passage, but can be logically inferred.
Although the author does not give an exact “education” formula, he effectively says that a number of factors are necessary to travel the high road to becoming educated. These include: passion, a knack for learning, discipline, and maturity. In terms of maturity, he clearly states, “The young can be prepared for education in the years to come, but only mature men and women can become educated, beginning the process in their forties and fifties and reaching some modicum of genuine insight, sound judgment and practical wisdom after they have turned sixty.” Obviously, according to the author, if maturity begins in a person’s forties and takes another ten to twenty years, then an individual cannot be less than forty years of age and still be considered educated.
Wrong answer choices in inference-type questions often fall outside the passage’s scope. Choice A is outside the passage’s scope and is specifically referred to as an unwarranted comparison. The author does not say whether he believes becoming educated takes more passion than maturity or more maturity than passion.
Choice C is perhaps the trickiest wrong answer choice. The author doesn’t imply that one has to be a university graduate. In fact, he mentions “school and/or college” (1st & 3rd paragraphs), which suggests that he may well lump high school in with college and/or university. A high school graduate might have enough schooling to get onto the road of education. Moreover, the author doesn’t claim one must be a four-year college or university graduate or even whether one has to attend college or university.
There is no mention of classic works of literature, so choice D is outside the passage’s scope; we cannot answer this question based on information presented in the passage. Choice E is wrong because the author never mentions “travel.” Don’t mistake the word “travail” (meaning “struggle”; 4th paragraph) for “travel.” Moreover, it is possible, without evidence to the contrary, that a person could never have left his or her own country and still understand those ideas that make him or her representative of his or her particular culture.
Question 4
Choice A. This is a tone question. Tone questions ask about the author’s feeling or attitude toward someone or something in the passage. Basically, the author will be either positive, negative, or neutral. In most cases, especially with respect to social science passages (versus science passages), the fact that the author would sit down to write something hints that he or she has some opinion about the topic at hand. Therefore, the neutral answer choice is not usually correct, even if available.
For this question, we have, on the positive and supportive side, the word pairs “invaluable partners,” “conscientious citizens,” or “unfortunate victims.” On the negative side, we have “uninformed participants” or “disdainful culprits.”
The author’s attitude toward adults is somewhat negative,