1991 - JAMB English Past Questions and Answers - page 11

  The preparation which a study of the humanities can provide stems from three observations about education in our world of accelerating social and technological change. First, with the rate of change, we cannot hope to train our student for specific technologies. That kind of vocational education is obsolescent. By the time the specific training will have been completed, the world will have moved on.

  If our education consists of narrow training, we will not be prepared to change. Second and paradoxically, what our student desire from their education is preparation for specific careers – business, engineering, medicine, computer programming and the like, but we will not be able to train them for a life-long career. Their confronting the depressed job market gives our students a certain anxiety, but the solution they seek in vocational training is not sufficient. Third, we sense in our students a narrow materialism, with the good life defined in terms of material comforts. Education then means learning to do a job which will make money. I see in this definition a limiting sense of what education and thus life offer, a definition which excludes joy and meaning. Our narrow approach to the study of the humanities responds to these three related problems. In our changing, yet narrow world, the teaching of the humanities finds one powerful justification – it teaches student how to think.

According to the writer, a study of the humanities

  The preparation which a study of the humanities can provide stems from three observations about education in our world of accelerating social and technological change. First, with the rate of change, we cannot hope to train our student for specific technologies. That kind of vocational education is obsolescent. By the time the specific training will have been completed, the world will have moved on.

  If our education consists of narrow training, we will not be prepared to change. Second and paradoxically, what our student desire from their education is preparation for specific careers – business, engineering, medicine, computer programming and the like, but we will not be able to train them for a life-long career. Their confronting the depressed job market gives our students a certain anxiety, but the solution they seek in vocational training is not sufficient. Third, we sense in our students a narrow materialism, with the good life defined in terms of material comforts. Education then means learning to do a job which will make money. I see in this definition a limiting sense of what education and thus life offer, a definition which excludes joy and meaning. Our narrow approach to the study of the humanities responds to these three related problems. In our changing, yet narrow world, the teaching of the humanities finds one powerful justification – it teaches student how to think.

What type of education does the writer advocate for our student?

  One fact that we have to complement is that, in our unconscious mind, we cannot distinguish between a wish and a deed. We are all aware of some of our illogical dreams in which two completely opposite statements can exist side by side – very acceptable in our dreams but unthinkable and illogical in our waking state. Just as our unconscious mind cannot differentiate between the wish to kill somebody in anger and the act of having done so, the young child is unable to make this distinction. The child who angrily wishes his mother to drop dead for not having gratified his needs will traumatized greatly by the actual death of his mother – even if this event is not linked closely in the time with his destructive wishes. He will always take part of or the whole of the blames for the loss of his mother. He will always say to himself - rarely to others - I did it. I am responsible. I was bad, therefore mummy left me. ‘It is well to remember that the child will react in the same manner if he loses a parent by divorce, separation or desertion.

  Death is often seen by a child as an impermanent thing and has therefore little distinction from a divorce which he may have an opportunity to see the parent again.

This passage emphasizes

  One fact that we have to complement is that, in our unconscious mind, we cannot distinguish between a wish and a deed. We are all aware of some of our illogical dreams in which two completely opposite statements can exist side by side – very acceptable in our dreams but unthinkable and illogical in our waking state. Just as our unconscious mind cannot differentiate between the wish to kill somebody in anger and the act of having done so, the young child is unable to make this distinction. The child who angrily wishes his mother to drop dead for not having gratified his needs will traumatized greatly by the actual death of his mother – even if this event is not linked closely in the time with his destructive wishes. He will always take part of or the whole of the blames for the loss of his mother. He will always say to himself - rarely to others - I did it. I am responsible. I was bad, therefore mummy left me. ‘It is well to remember that the child will react in the same manner if he loses a parent by divorce, separation or desertion.

  Death is often seen by a child as an impermanent thing and has therefore little distinction from a divorce which he may have an opportunity to see the parent again.

Our unconscious minds and and dreams are alike in that

  One fact that we have to complement is that, in our unconscious mind, we cannot distinguish between a wish and a deed. We are all aware of some of our illogical dreams in which two completely opposite statements can exist side by side – very acceptable in our dreams but unthinkable and illogical in our waking state. Just as our unconscious mind cannot differentiate between the wish to kill somebody in anger and the act of having done so, the young child is unable to make this distinction. The child who angrily wishes his mother to drop dead for not having gratified his needs will traumatized greatly by the actual death of his mother – even if this event is not linked closely in the time with his destructive wishes. He will always take part of or the whole of the blames for the loss of his mother. He will always say to himself - rarely to others - I did it. I am responsible. I was bad, therefore mummy left me. ‘It is well to remember that the child will react in the same manner if he loses a parent by divorce, separation or desertion.

  Death is often seen by a child as an impermanent thing and has therefore little distinction from a divorce which he may have an opportunity to see the parent again.

The child would feel irresponsible for his mother's death even if it is connected with his wishes because

  One fact that we have to complement is that, in our unconscious mind, we cannot distinguish between a wish and a deed. We are all aware of some of our illogical dreams in which two completely opposite statements can exist side by side – very acceptable in our dreams but unthinkable and illogical in our waking state. Just as our unconscious mind cannot differentiate between the wish to kill somebody in anger and the act of having done so, the young child is unable to make this distinction. The child who angrily wishes his mother to drop dead for not having gratified his needs will traumatized greatly by the actual death of his mother – even if this event is not linked closely in the time with his destructive wishes. He will always take part of or the whole of the blames for the loss of his mother. He will always say to himself - rarely to others - I did it. I am responsible. I was bad, therefore mummy left me. ‘It is well to remember that the child will react in the same manner if he loses a parent by divorce, separation or desertion.

  Death is often seen by a child as an impermanent thing and has therefore little distinction from a divorce which he may have an opportunity to see the parent again.

'Traumatized' as used in the passage means

  One fact that we have to complement is that, in our unconscious mind, we cannot distinguish between a wish and a deed. We are all aware of some of our illogical dreams in which two completely opposite statements can exist side by side – very acceptable in our dreams but unthinkable and illogical in our waking state. Just as our unconscious mind cannot differentiate between the wish to kill somebody in anger and the act of having done so, the young child is unable to make this distinction. The child who angrily wishes his mother to drop dead for not having gratified his needs will traumatized greatly by the actual death of his mother – even if this event is not linked closely in the time with his destructive wishes. He will always take part of or the whole of the blames for the loss of his mother. He will always say to himself - rarely to others - I did it. I am responsible. I was bad, therefore mummy left me. ‘It is well to remember that the child will react in the same manner if he loses a parent by divorce, separation or desertion.

  Death is often seen by a child as an impermanent thing and has therefore little distinction from a divorce which he may have an opportunity to see the parent again.

From the child's point of view, in what way is death likened to a divorce?

  Undergraduate students in psychology and education come to their first course in statistics with diverse expectation of and background in mathematics. Some have considerable formal training and quantitative aptitude and look forward to learning statistics. Others – perhaps the majority, including some of those who aspire to postgraduate studies – are less confident in their quantitative skills. They regard a course in statistics as a necessary evil for the understanding or carrying out of research in their chosen fields, but an evil nonetheless.

  The third edition, like the predecessors, is directed primarily at the latter audience it was written with the conviction that statistical concepts can be described simply without loss of accuracy and that understanding statistical techniques as research tools can be effectively promoted by discussing them within the context of their application to concrete data rather than as pure abstraction. Further, its contents are limited to those statistical techniques that are widely used in the literature of psychology and to the principle underlying them.

  The changes that have been made in this edition reflect both the results of our teaching experience and the increasing prominence being given by statisticians to certain topics. Thus our discussion of some procedures, particularly those in the realm of descriptive statistics, which students grasp easily, have being shortened or rearranged. The treatment of other topics has been expanded. Greater emphasis has been placed on sampling theory, hypothesis testing, and the notion at statistical power.

The book discussed in this passage is about

  Undergraduate students in psychology and education come to their first course in statistics with diverse expectation of and background in mathematics. Some have considerable formal training and quantitative aptitude and look forward to learning statistics. Others – perhaps the majority, including some of those who aspire to postgraduate studies – are less confident in their quantitative skills. They regard a course in statistics as a necessary evil for the understanding or carrying out of research in their chosen fields, but an evil nonetheless.

  The third edition, like the predecessors, is directed primarily at the latter audience it was written with the conviction that statistical concepts can be described simply without loss of accuracy and that understanding statistical techniques as research tools can be effectively promoted by discussing them within the context of their application to concrete data rather than as pure abstraction. Further, its contents are limited to those statistical techniques that are widely used in the literature of psychology and to the principle underlying them.

  The changes that have been made in this edition reflect both the results of our teaching experience and the increasing prominence being given by statisticians to certain topics. Thus our discussion of some procedures, particularly those in the realm of descriptive statistics, which students grasp easily, have being shortened or rearranged. The treatment of other topics has been expanded. Greater emphasis has been placed on sampling theory, hypothesis testing, and the notion at statistical power.

The expression 'necessary evil' means that

  Undergraduate students in psychology and education come to their first course in statistics with diverse expectation of and background in mathematics. Some have considerable formal training and quantitative aptitude and look forward to learning statistics. Others – perhaps the majority, including some of those who aspire to postgraduate studies – are less confident in their quantitative skills. They regard a course in statistics as a necessary evil for the understanding or carrying out of research in their chosen fields, but an evil nonetheless.

  The third edition, like the predecessors, is directed primarily at the latter audience it was written with the conviction that statistical concepts can be described simply without loss of accuracy and that understanding statistical techniques as research tools can be effectively promoted by discussing them within the context of their application to concrete data rather than as pure abstraction. Further, its contents are limited to those statistical techniques that are widely used in the literature of psychology and to the principle underlying them.

  The changes that have been made in this edition reflect both the results of our teaching experience and the increasing prominence being given by statisticians to certain topics. Thus our discussion of some procedures, particularly those in the realm of descriptive statistics, which students grasp easily, have being shortened or rearranged. The treatment of other topics has been expanded. Greater emphasis has been placed on sampling theory, hypothesis testing, and the notion at statistical power.

From the passage, we learn that the book discussed has been