General Paper UACE
General Paper UACE
GENERAL PAPER
Paper 1
GENERAL PAPER
Paper 1
2 hours 40 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES:
The total time of 2 hours and 40 minutes includes ten minutes for you to
study the questions before you begin your answers.
Answer two questions which must be chosen as follows: one question from
section A and one question from section B.
Answers to each question must begin in a fresh answer booklet which should
then be fastened together.
You are advised to divide your time equally between the two questions.
SECTION A
SECTION B
(Answer one question form this section)
5. Study the following information carefully and answer the questions that
follow.
Information available indicates that 49% of the pupils in primary schools in 2016
were girls. The total numbers of boys was 3,872,589. The number of students who
sat UCE was 120,000 while 70,000 students sat UACE in the same year.
(b) (i) Calculate the average rate to P.5 for both boys and girls for the four years.
(10 marks)
(ii) What is the total number of students who dropped out of school between
S.1 2013 and S.4 2016? (10 marks)
(c) Account for the difference in the drop out between the boys and girls.
(08 marks)
6. Read the passage below and answer the questions which follow using your own
words wherever possible.
Think the Catholic bishops of America recently issued a statement in which they
said that the chaotic and bewildered state of the modern world is due to man’s loss
of faith, his abandonment of God and religion. For my part I believe in no religion at
all. Yet! I entirely agree with the bishops. It is no doubt an oversimplification to
speak of the cause of so complex a state of affairs as the tortured condition of the
world today. Its causes that the bishops’ assertion is substantially true.
Mr. Jean-Paul Sartre the French existentialist philosopher, labels himself an atheist.
Yet his views seem to me plainly to support the statement of the bishops. So long as
there was believed to be a God in the sky, he says, men could regard him as the
source of their moral ideals. The universe, creates and governed by a fatherly God
was a friendly habitation of man. We could be sure that, however great the evil in
the world be routed. With the disappearance of God from the sky all has changed.
Since the world is not ruled by a spiritual being, but rather by blind forces, there
cannot be any ideals, moral or otherwise in the universe outside us. Our ideals
therefore must proceed only from our own minds; they are our own inventions. Thus
the world which surrounds is nothing but an immense spiritual emptiness. It is a
dead universe. We do not live in a universe which is on the side of our values. It is
completely indifferent to them.
Years ago Mr. Bertrand Russell in his essay A Free Man’s Worship, said much the
same thing. “such in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is
the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere,
our ideals henceforward must find a home …… blind to good and evil, reckless of
destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for man condemned today
to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains
only to cherish, are yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that enable his little day….
to worship at the shrine his own hands have built….. to sustain alone, of but
unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling
march of unconscious power.”
It is true that Mr. Russell’s personal attitude to the disappearance of religion is quite
different from that of Mr. Sartre or the bishops or myself. The bishops think it is
calamity. So do I … Mr. Sartre finds it “very distressing” and he berates as shallow
the attitude of those who think that without God the world can go on just the same
as before , as of nothing had happened. This creates for mankind he thinks a terrible
crisis. And in this agree with him. Mr. Russell on the other hand seems to believe
that religion has done more harm than good in the world and that its disappearance
will be a blessing.
Mr. Russell notes that it is science which has produced this situation. There is no
doubt that thus us correct. But the way in which it has come about is not generally
understood. There is popular belief that some particular scientific discoveries or
theories such as the Darwinian theory of evolution, or the views of geologists about
the age of the earth, or a series of such discoveries have had a great effect in
undermining religious dogmas. But this account does not at all go to the root of the
matter.
Religion can probably outlive any scientific discoveries which could be made. It can
accommodate itself to them. The root cause of the decay of faith has not been any
particular discovery of science, but rather the general spirit of science and certain
basic assumptions upon which modern science from the 17 th century onwards has
proceeded.
Questions:
(b) What does the author mean by “…. An oversimplification to speak of the cause
of so complex a state of affairs as the tortured condition of the world today?”
(04 marks)
(c) What has caused this state of the modern world according to Mr. Jean Paul
Sartre? (03 marks)
(d) What is the difference between Russell’s opinion about religion and that of the
others? (04 marks)
(e) Explain in not more than 100 words the problems of the modern world.
(10 marks)
(f) Explain the meaning of the following words and phrases as used in the
passage.
END