98 B English Passage 16 Feb
Passage - 1
Read below given statements
(a) Education is functional and utilitarian in its purposes.
(b) Education is meant to fulfil human needs.
(c) The purpose of education is to train the human intellect.
(d) Education is meant to achieve moral development.
Read below given passage
Education, without a doubt, has an important functional Instrumental and utilitarian dimension.
This is revealed when one asks question such as 'what is the purpose of education ?'
The answers, too often, are' to acquire qualifications for employment/ upward mobility', 'wider/higher(interns of income) opportunities', and 'to meet the needs for trained human power in diverse fields for national development'.
But in its deepest sense education is not instrumentalist.
That is to say, it is not to be justified outside of itself because it leads to the acquisition of formal skills or of certain desired psychological social attributes. It must be respected in itself.
Education is thus not a commodity to be acquired or possessed and then used, but a process of inestimable importance to individuals and society, although it can and does have enormous use value.
Education then, is a process of expansion and conversion, not in the sense of converting or turning students into doctors or engineers, but the widening and turning out of the mind - the creation, sustenance and development of self-critical awareness and independence of thought.
It is an inner process of moral intellectual development.
What do you understand by the 'instrumentalist' view of education?
(a) Education is functional and utilitarian in its purposes.
(b) Education is meant to fulfil human needs.
(c) The purpose of education is to train the human intellect.
(d) Education is meant to achieve moral development.
Ans. (a)
Explanation
Instrumental means serving as means. Referring to the lines, "But in its deepest sense, education is not instrumentalist . Hence the answer should be in negative connotations, whereas options (b), (c) and (d) are given as positive outcomes. So, the correct answer should be (a).
Passage-2
Read below given statements
(a) It is very natural for many organisms to have pesticide resistance.
(b) Pesticide resistance among organisms is a universal phenomenon.
(c) Some individuals in any given population show resistance after the application of pesticides.
Chemical pesticides lose their role in sustainable agriculture if the pests evolve resistance.
The evolution of pesticide resistance is simply natural selection in action.
It is almost certain to occur when vast numbers of a genetically variable population are killed.
One or a few individuals may be unusually resistant (perhaps because they possess an enzyme that can detoxify the pesticide).
If the pesticide is applied repeatedly, each successive generation of the pest will contain a larger proportion of resistant individuals.
Pests typically have a high intrinsic rate of reproduction, and so a few individuals in one generation may give rise to hundreds or thousands in the next, and resistance spreads very rapidly in a population
This problem was often ignored in the past, even though the first case of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) resistance was reported early as 1946.
There is exponential increase in the numbers of invertebrates that have evolved resistance and in the number of pesticides against which resistance has evolved.
Resistance has been recorded in every family of arthropod pests (including dipterans such as mosquitoes and house flies, as well as beetles, moths, wasps, fleas, lice and mites) as well as well as in weeds and plant pathogens. Take the Alabama leafworm, a moth pest of cotton, as an example.
It has developed resistance in one or more regions of the world to aldrin, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, lindane
If chemical pesticides brought nothing but
problems - if their use was intrinsically and acutely unsustainable - then they would already have fallen out of widespread use. This has not happened .Instead, their rate of production has increased rapidly The ratio of cost to benefit for the individual
agricultural producer has remained in favour of pesticide use. In the USA, insecticides have been estimated to benefit the agricultural products to the tune of around $5 for every $1 spent.
Moreover, in many poorer countries, the prospect of imminent mass starvation, or of an epidemic diseases, are so frightening that the social and health of costs of using pesticides have to be ignored.
In general the use of pesticides is justified by objective measures such as 'lives saved', 'economic efficiency of food production' and 'total food produced'.
In these very fundamental senses, their use may be described as sustainable.
In practice, sustainability depends on continually developing new pesticides that keep at least one step ahead of the pests pesticides that are less persistent, biodegradable and more accurately targeted at the pests.
Qts "The evolution of pesticide resistance is natural selection in action." What does it actually imply?
(a) It is very natural for many organisms to have pesticide resistance.
(b) Pesticide resistance among organisms is a universal phenomenon.
(c) Some individuals in any given population show resistance after the application of pesticides.
(d) None of the statements (a), (b) and (c) given above is correct.
Ans. (c)
Explanation
If the pesticide is applied repeatedly each successive generation of the pest will contain a large proportion of resistant individuals. Hence, pesticide resistance is natural selection in action.