It is necessary to have a standard of education. We can set two sorts of standards there. First, a minimum standard below which no one is allowed to fall, in the shape of so many years of elementary education in such and such subjects. And secondly, and in a way even more important, a standard of equal opportunity for all, to ensure that no boy or girl is deprived of the chance of climbing to the top of the educational ladder through poverty or the accidents of birth. There are also standards of economic security. During the recent past, the sense of insecurity has been the single greatest cause, both of individual anxiety and frustration, and of social instability and unrest. A state must see to it that it gives to all its citizens minimum standards of security against ill health, against unemployment, against widowhood, against old age. Issues of social security are, therefore, interlinked, irrespective of whether they are in the field of basic education, basic health, employment or even protection against economic needs arising out of old age, disability etc. The state expenditure on social security is bound to fall upon the shoulders of the society at large. A society that cannot take due care of such basic needs of each and every of its members is not fit to be called in the true sense of the term.

Which of the following statements in respect of education and social security are true as per the text?

Observe the dilemma of the fungus: it is a plant, but it possesses no chlorophyll. While all other plants put the sun’s energy to work for them combining the nutrients of ground and air into the body structure, the fungus must look elsewhere for energy supply. It finds it in those other plants which, having received their energy free from the sun, relinquish it at some point in their cycle either to animals (like us humans) or to the fungi. In this search for energy the fungus has become the earth’s major source of rot and decay. Wherever you see mould forming on a piece of bread, or a pile of leaves turning to compost, or a blown-down tree becoming pulp on the ground, you are watching a fungus eating. Without fungus action the earth would be piled high with the dead plant life of past centuries. In fact, certain plants which contain resins that are toxic to fungi will last indefinitely; specimens of the redwood, for instance, can still be found resting on the forest floor centuries after having been blown down.

Which of the following statements in respect of the fungus cannot be derived from the text?

Books of travel are of all kinds, from the dry records of laborious statisticians to the trivial diaries of globe-trotters. Explorers, seamen, archaeologists, naturalists, dreamers, what type of man or woman has not written a book of travel? They are read, they are forgotten and ninety-nine out of every hundred pass away into oblivion. Yet there are others. Alas! There aren’t many. Great books are rare, same as the people of genius and character are. To write a book of travel appeals irresistibly to large numbers of persons who have no creative power, whose books are the mere reflection of a shallow curiosity and of a foolish egotism. These mediocre works, though they spread a sort of suburban light upon the beautiful and wild places of earth, pale into trivialities on comparison with the achievement of the true travellers who by reason of their fortitude, their imagination, their insight and their ability to evoke the atmosphere and colour of the world, have produced books that rank as literature and last for centuries.

Which of the following statements about books of travel can be supported from the text?

Despite all the new thinking, there is still no acceptable alternative to the examination. Whether it be at the end of term, or the year, or at the end of a school course or for the purpose of choosing candidates for a course of study and training, the only practicable way of measuring a student’s performance or of assessing his potential is by an examination, supplemented where necessary, by recommendation, interview and other devices. The most unfortunate by-product of the examination system has been the proliferation of study notes, guides to passing examination, model answers, hints for writing essays and similar travesties of education. There is no need to engage on the unethical nature of these publications. From the student’s point of view a rigorous censorship of this kind of publication would be a great advantage. For one thing these ‘notes’ promote the habit of rote learning. For the other, they are priced more highly than the poems of Wordsworth or the plays of Shakespeare, although they are not worth the paper they are printed on. The sooner we find a way to dispense with these, the better it is for the student community and the system at large.

Which of the following statements in respect of education and examination system are true as per the text?

It is in the university that leaders of the country are trained. The university education is calculated to produce and is producing, men who will be able to play worthy part in public life. It is true that legislative and administrative capacities are developed by experience and by practical knowledge of affairs. Foundations need to be laid at a much earlier stage. It is from this university teaching that a young man should learn to examine critically the material before him, to arrive at a balanced judgment; and not to be carried away by mere catchwords. But in public affairs something more is needed than the power of criticism and intellectual judgment. It is mainly outside the classroom that the boy learns the lesson of corporate life, how to understand the views of others and to work with them, how to sacrifice cheerfully his private inclination for the common good, and how to lead others by influence rather than by authority. He learns these lessons daily by contacts in clubs and societies, in playing fields and common rooms and also not the least by the guidance of wise teachers from whom a timely word may mean so much.

According to the information given in the passage, select the statement(s) that the author may probably disagree with?

There are other environmental problems connected with offshore oil, besides oil pollution, many of them are routine part of operations. In drilling an offshore well, operators customarily discard overboard their drill cuttings with some un-separated drilling mud (which is not actually mud but a combination of clay and chemicals). A typical 15,000-foot well usually produces more than 1,000 tons of drill cuttings. In addition, mineral salts, which may have distinctly harmful effects on some forms of marine life, are released from geological formations and are regularly discharged after treatment in the course of production. Localized short-term impacts have been detected as a result of these discharges. Routine discharges like these, together with chronic low-level oil leaks, present “considerable environmental risk,” the Council on Environmental Quality concluded in its report on OCS oil and gas. Digging channels for service ships and barges, building docks and other structures at the waterfront, and, to a lesser extent, laying pipeline cause another kind of environmental disruption. Instead of poisoning marine creatures, these activities tend to bury them, choke them, or cut off the light, which is essential to their whole food chain. Most importantly, dredging and filling change drainage patterns of estuaries and wetlands and can lead to erosion or saltwater intrusion. Increased salinity of the water in marshes and estuaries is usually damaging to the young fish, shellfish, and other organisms residing there. They may not be able to tolerate the higher salinity or they may be decimated by invading predators with an affinity for saltier waters.

According to the information given in the passage, select the statement(s) that the author may probably disagree with?

Primitive man was probably more concerned with fire as a source of warmth and as a means of cooking food than as a source of light. Before he discovered less laborious ways of making fire, he had to preserve it, and whenever he went on a journey he carried a firebrand with him. His discovery that the firebrand from which the torch may well have developed, could be used for illumination was probably incidental purpose of preserving a flame.  Lamps, too probably developed by accident. Early man may have had his first conception of a lamp while watching a twig of fibre burning in the molten fat dropped from roasting carcass. All he had to do was to fashion a vessel to contain fat and float a lighted reed in it. Such lamps, which were made of hollowed stones or sea-shells, have persisted in identical form up to quite recent times.

Which of the following statements can be derived from the text?

Wheat is one of most primitive types of food in the world. Its discovery contributed to the development of Homo-sapiens from hunters to farmers. Civilization arose where soil was fertile and wheat could be produced. The Stone Age farmers in the Middle East 9000 years ago were perhaps the first to cultivate cereal grams, such as wheat and barley. They also developed bread wheat from a cross of wild wheat and grasses. Studies on Neolithic women in Syria highlight damage to their toes, knees and vertebrate as they had to spend long hours kneeling before saddle-shaped stones to crush grains. The finding that grain could be grounded to make a powder called a meal must have been fantastic because raw wheat is distasteful. This powder called meal was used to make porridge or gruel until baking was discovered. The baked flour was more enjoyable and tasty. Sieve or baskets were made using horse hair or papyrus to separate the ground meal into coarse bran particles and white flour. Later ancient Romans crushed the grain and sifted the flour through linen, twice. This was an expensive procedure that only the aristocracy could afford. The white flour obtained was called “pollen” meaning a fine powder. The Romans were the pioneers in the birth of the milling industry using animals or slaves to drive the wheels to grind wheat. It was only in the 11th century that water and wind mills appeared to grind the wheat.

Which of the following statements is/are not true in accordance with the information given in the above passage?

In 1861, Matthew Brady, a well-known portrait photographer, approached President Lincoln requesting permission to move freely about the country photographing the Civil War. Lincoln granted him permission to travel anywhere with the Union armies, and his record of this conflict brought home to millions the horrors of war.       Brady wasn’t the first official war photographer. Six years earlier, Roger Fenton, a lawyer and amateur photographer, had returned from the Crimea, having been personally chosen by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. However, his instructions were more likely to have been to send back work that boosted morale back home rather than the terrible realities of war. Brady’s coverage of the war made him a household name, but he had hundreds of assistants, and it’s even possible that he didn’t take any of the 7,000 pictures that were marketed under his name. But no one else could have organized the large army of photographers needed to cover the broad sweep of the war and provided access to many leading generals and politicians.

Why do some countries drive on the left, while others – the majority- drive on the right? In fact, those that drive on the left make up about twenty-five per cent of the world’s countries and are, apart from the UK itself, mostly countries that were British colonies: India, South Africa, Singapore, Jamaica, and so on. Japan does too, although it wasn’t a colony, and as late as 2009, Samoa switched from driving on the right largely because they wanted to buy right-hand drive cars made in Japan and New Zealand.     The Romans introduced the custom of keeping to the left, a habit that was reinforced in medieval times when riders throughout Europe passed oncoming strangers sword arm to sword arm – this idea is based on the fact that the majority of people are right-handed. An increase in horse traffic towards the end of the 18th century meant that the convention gained strength, but it was not put into law until 1835. Legend lias it that Napoleon is responsible for making the European countries which he conquered keep to the right, for the simple reason either that he was left-handed himself, or that he wanted to be different from his enemy, England. This is most probably nonsense, but an Emperor’s whims can go a long way. So France, obviously, and Spain, the Netherlands and other countries Napoleon overran used this system, and over the years other countries adopted the practice to make crossing borders easier and safer. The latest European country to convert was Sweden, in 1967.

According to the text, which of the countries listed below drive on the left?