Amity University, Haryana

ODD Semester Sessional 2019-20 Name:

Reading & Comprehension Course:
Date:
Marks: 40

Q1. Read the passage carefully and give suitable answers.

Philosophy of Education is a label applied to the study of the purpose, process,
nature and ideals of education. It can be considered a branch of both philosophy
and education. Education can be defined as the teaching and learning of specific
skills, and the imparting of knowledge, judgment and wisdom, and is something
broader than the societal institution of education we often speak of.
Many educationalists consider it a weak and woolly field, too far removed from the
practical applications of the real world to be useful. But philosophers dating back
to Plato and the Ancient Greeks have given the area much thought and emphasis,
and there is little doubt that their work has helped shape the practice of education
over the millennia.
Plato is the earliest important educational thinker, and education is an essential
element in "The Republic" (his most important work on philosophy and political
theory, written around 360 B.C.). In it, he advocates some rather extreme methods:
removing children from their mothers' care and raising them as wards of the state,
and differentiating children suitable to the various castes, the highest receiving the
most education, so that they could act as guardians of the city and care for the less
able. He believed that education should be holistic, including facts, skills, physical
discipline, music and art. Plato believed that talent and intelligence is not
distributed genetically and thus is be found in children born to all classes, although
his proposed system of selective public education for an educated minority of the
population does not really follow a democratic model.
Aristotle considered human nature, habit and reason to be equally important forces
to be cultivated in education, the ultimate aim of which should be to produce good
and virtuous citizens. He proposed that teachers lead their students systematically,
and that repetition be used as a key tool to develop good habits, unlike Socrates'
emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas. He emphasized
the balancing of the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught, among
which he explicitly mentions reading, writing, mathematics, music, physical
education, literature, history, and a wide range of sciences, as well as play, which
he also considered important.
During the Medieval period, the idea of Perennialism was first formulated by St.
Thomas Aquinas in his work "De Magistro". Perennialism holds that one should
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teach those things deemed to be of everlasting importance to all people

everywhere, namely principles and reasoning, not just facts (which are apt to
change over time), and that one should teach first about people, not machines or
techniques. It was originally religious in nature, and it was only much later that a
theory of secular perennialism developed.
During the Renaissance, the French skeptic Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)
was one of the first to critically look at education. Unusually for his time,
Montaigne was willing to question the conventional wisdom of the period, calling
into question the whole edifice of the educational system, and the implicit
assumption that university-educated philosophers were necessarily wiser than
uneducated farm workers, for example. (10)
1. What is the difference between the approaches of Socrates and Aristotle?
1)Aristotle felt the need for repetition to develop good habits in students; Socrates
felt that students need to be constantly questioned
2)Aristotle felt the need for rote-learning; Socrates emphasized on dialogic
learning
3)There was no difference
4)Aristotle emphasized on the importance of paying attention to human nature;
Socrates emphasized upon science
 
2. Why do educationists consider philosophy a ‘weak and woolly’ field?
1)It is not practically applicable
2)Its theoretical concepts are easily understood
3)It is irrelevant for education
4)None of the above
  
3. What do you understand by the term ‘Perennialism’, in the context of the
given comprehension passage?
1)It refers to something which is of ceaseless importance
2)It refers to something which is quite unnecessary
3)It refers to something which is abstract and theoretical
4) It refers to something which existed in the past and no longer exists now
 
 
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4. Were Plato’s beliefs about education democratic?

1)He believed that only the rich have the right to acquire education
2)Yes
3)He believed that only a select few are meant to attend schools
4) He believed that all pupils are not talented 
5. Why did Aquinas propose a model of education which did not lay much
emphasis on facts?
1)Facts are not important
2)Facts do not lead to holistic education
3)Facts change with the changing times
4)Facts are frozen in time

Q2. “A principal fruit of friendship,” Francis Bacon wrote in his timeless

meditation on the subject, “is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of
the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.” For Thoreau,
friendship was one of life’s great rewards. But in today’s cultural landscape of
muddled relationships scattered across various platforms for connecting, amidst
constant debates about whether our Facebook “friendships” are making us more or
less happy, it pays to consider what friendship actually is. That’s precisely what
CUNY philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci explores in Answers for Aristotle:
How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life (public
library), which also gave us this provocative read on the science of what we call
“intuition.”
Philosophers and cognitive scientists agree that friendship is an essential ingredient
of human happiness. But beyond the dry academic definitions — like, say,
“voluntary interdependence between two persons over time, which is intended to
facilitate socio-emotional goals of the participants, and may involve varying types
and degrees of companionship, intimacy, affection and mutual assistance” — lies a
body of compelling research that sheds light on how, precisely, friendship
augments happiness. 
The way friendship enhances well-being, it turns out, has nothing to do with
quantity and everything to do with quality — researchers confirm that it isn’t the
number of friends (or, in the case of Facebook, “friends”) (10)
 
1. Name one change effected in the present situation which hassled to a re-
thinking of the concept of friendship.
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1)Bacon and Thoreau’s theories are no longer available to read

2)The arrival of social media on the scene
3)There is more interest in the sciences
4)Friendships are not possible in the real world anymore, due to over-competition 
2. Friendship leads to happiness. Is it true?
1)Yes, researches have proven that friendship does lead to happiness
2)No, there is no relationship between friendship and happiness
3)Friends cannot make each other happy
4)One needs to find one’s happiness alone, with peace of mind 
3. Did Pigluicci’s book discuss intuition too?
1)No, it only discussed friendship
2)It explained science and philosophy
3)It discusses Aristotle’s theories
4)Yes
4. Is the quality of friends important?
1)No, it is important to have more number of friends, quality does not matter
2)No, number of comments on social networking sites is important, not the quality
of friends
3)Yes, it matter
4)No, quality comes automatically with quantity
5. As per the first, paragraph what are the debates about?
1)They are centred around whether our Facebook friends are helping us become
more or less happy
2)There are no debates around friendship
3)The quality of comments of social media is debatable
4)Thoreau and Aristotle’s thinking is at loggerheads
 
Q3. What do you understand by Effective Reading? Define the process of
Reading. (10)
Q4. What is Reading Rate Adjustment? What are the types of Reading? (10)