1. In the following passage, the author describes two court cases where students’ First Amendment rights were challenged. What is the main idea of the passage?

Boccia made a federal case of it and won a settlement from her school vindicating her First Amendment rights. Sometimes schools back down when threatened with lawsuits, and many students willing to challenge their suspensions should ultimately prevail in court if their judges recognize the Bill of Rights. But repression is becoming respectable, and some federal judges are as wary of free speech as school administrators are. Student speech rights have, after all, been steadily eroding for the past two decades. The landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District upholding the right to wear a black armband to school to protest the Vietnam War has not been overruled, but its assertion that students do not leave their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door has not been honored either.

Work Cited:

Kaminer, Wendy. “The War on High Schools.” The American Prospect. Nov. 2001. Web. <http://www.prospect.org>.

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2. Which of the following is not one of the reasons the author gives to answer the question “Why do we treat students like criminal suspects?” in the following passage?

Why do we treat students like criminal suspects? We can’t simply blame recent incidents of gun violence; minors were the victims of repressive laws and policies long before the Littleton shootings. Adults fear the sexuality of teens, or envy their youth, or worry about their judgment, or, like Dr. Frankenstein, they want to mold their little monsters instead of allowing them their freedom to develop. In any case, obsessive concern about unruly children and especially adolescents is a long-standing American tradition. . . .

Work Cited:

Kaminer, Wendy. “The War on High Schools.” The American Prospect. Nov. 2001. Web. <http://www.prospect.org>.

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3. Which of the following statements is not a supporting detail for the main idea that “[The First Amendment’s] high purpose is the protection of unpopular ideas and political dissent”?

The Hollywood Ten were correct in claiming the First Amendment. Its high purpose is the protection of unpopular ideas and political dissent. In the dark, cold days of the 1950s, few civil libertarians were willing to declare themselves First Amendment absolutists. But in the brighter, though frantic, days of the 1960s, the principle of protecting unpopular political speech was gradually strengthened.

It is fair to say now that the battle has largely been won. Even the American Nazi party has found itself the beneficiary of the dedicated, tireless work of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Work Cited:

Brownmiller, Susan. “Let’s Put Pornography Back in the Closet.” Newsday. 1979. Print.

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4. Read the following passage from “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner.

My test for carbonated soft drinks is whether they still fizz vigorously. Many juices or other beverages are too acid or too syrupy to cause much concern provided they are not visibly contaminated. Liquids, however, require some care.

One hot day I found a large jug of Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane mix. The jug had been opened, but it was still ice cold. I drank three large glasses before it became apparent to me that someone had added the rum to the mix, and not a little rum. I never tasted the rum and by the time I began to feel the effects I had already ingested a very large quantity of the beverage. Some divers would have considered this a boon, but being suddenly and thoroughly intoxicated in a public place in the early afternoon is not my idea of a good time.

I have heard of people maliciously contaminating discarded food and even handouts, but mostly I have heard of this from people with vivid imaginations who have had no experience with the Dumpsters themselves. Just before the pizza shop stopped discarding its garbage at night, jalapeños began showing up on most of the discarded pizzas. If indeed this was meant to discourage me it was a wasted effort because I am native Texan.

Work Cited:

Eighner, Lars. “On Dumpster Diving.” Travels With Lizbeth. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993. 111-125. Print.

Which of the following supporting details is not directly related to the main idea--“Liquids, however, require some care”?

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5. Why does the author “hate the can scroungers”?

Curiously, I do not mind my direct competition, other scavengers, so much as I hate the can scroungers.

People scrounge cans because they have to have a little cash. I have tried scrounging cans with an able-bodied companion. Afoot a can scrounger simply cannot make more than a few dollars a day. One can extract the necessities of life from the Dumpsters directly with far less effort than would be required to accumulate the equivalent value in cans.

Can scroungers, then, are people who must have small amounts of cash. These are drug addicts and winos, mostly the latter because the amounts of cash are so small.

Spirits and drugs do, like all other commodities, turn up in Dumpsters and the scavenger will from time to time have a half bottle of a rather good wine with his dinner. But the wino cannot survive on these occasional finds; he must have his daily dose to stave off the DTs. All the cans he can carry will buy about three bottles of Wild Irish Rose.

I do not begrudge them the cans, but can scroungers tend to tear up the Dumpsters, mixing the contents and littering the area. They become so specialized that they can see only cans. They earn my contempt by passing up change, canned goods, and readily hockable items. There are precious few courtesies among scavengers. But it is a common practice to set aside surplus items: pairs of shoes, clothing, canned goods, and such. A true scavenger hates to see good stuff go to waste and what he cannot use he leaves in good condition in plain sight.

Can scroungers lay waste to everything in their path and will stir one of a pair of good shoes to the bottom of a Dumpster, to be lost or ruined in the muck. Can scroungers will even go through individual garbage cans, something I have never seen a scavenger do.

Work Cited:

Eighner, Lars. “On Dumpster Diving.” Travels With Lizbeth. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993. 111-125. Print.

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6. What is the main idea of this passage?

I once tried going a whole week without telling a lie, and it was paralyzing. I discovered that telling the truth all the time is nearly impossible. It means living with some serious consequences: The bank charges me $60 in overdraft fees, my partner keels over when I tell him about my travails, my client fires me for telling her I didn’t feel like being on time, and my friend takes it personally when I say I’m not hungry. There must be some merit to lying.

Work Cited:

Ericsson, Stephanie. “The Ways We Lie.” The Utne Reader. Nov-Dec. 1992. Web.

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7. Which of the following sentences from the passage below is not a supporting idea for the main idea, “Omission involves telling most of the truth minus one or two key facts whose absence changes the story completely”?

Omission involves telling most of the truth minus one or two key facts whose absence changes the story completely…

For instance, one day I found out that rabbinical legends tell of another woman in the Garden of Eden before Eve. I was stunned. The omission of the Sumerian goddess Lilith from Genesis — as well as her demonization by ancient misogynists as an embodiment of female evil — felt like spiritual robbery. I felt like I’d just found out my mother was really my stepmother. To take seriously the tradition that Adam was created out of the same mud as his equal counterpart, Lilith, redefines all of Judeo-Christian history.

Some renegade Catholic feminists introduced me to a view of Lilith that had been suppressed during the many centuries when this strong goddess was seen only as a spirit of evil. Lilith was a proud goddess who defied Adam’s need to control her, attempted negotiations, and when this failed, said adios and left the Garden of Eden.

This omission of Lilith from the Bible was a patriarchal strategy to keep women weak. Omitting the strong-woman archetype of Lilith from Western religions and starting the story with Eve the Rib has helped keep Christian and Jewish women believing they were the lesser sex for thousands of years.

Work Cited:

Ericsson, Stephanie. “The Ways We Lie.” The Utne Reader. Nov-Dec. 1992. Web.

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8. What is the main idea in the passage below?

Some people may believe that such a project is too large or slow or presumptuous for humanity to undertake. But consider our current situation on Earth. There are nearly 6 billion of us now, and the number may double, though we have no good idea how many of us the Earth can support. Many larger species are in danger of extinction unless we protect them from us. We have rearranged much of the land, and we have altered the atmosphere to the point where the global climate in the future will be a matter of legislation and industrial practice. In other words, we are already starting to terraform Earth by necessity to keep it livable. Given this situation, the attempt to terraform Mars does not look so outlandish. Doing it could be regarded as a valuable experiment, with Mars as a giant lab or university, in which we learn how to steward a planet’s biosphere for long-term sustainability.

Work Cited:

Robinson, Kim Stanley. “A Colony in the Sky.” Newsweek. 23 Sept. 1996.

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9. In the following passage, the author compares our treatment of Earth and the idea of terraforming Mars. How are they similar, according to the author?

Some people may believe that such a project is too large or slow or presumptuous for humanity to undertake. But consider our current situation on Earth. There are nearly 6 billion of us now, and the number may double, though we have no good idea how many of us the Earth can support. Many larger species are in danger of extinction unless we protect them from us. We have rearranged much of the land, and we have altered the atmosphere to the point where the global climate in the future will be a matter of legislation and industrial practice. In other words, we are already starting to terraform Earth by necessity to keep it livable. Given this situation, the attempt to terraform Mars does not look so outlandish. Doing it could be regarded as a valuable experiment, with Mars as a giant lab or university, in which we learn how to steward a planet’s biosphere for long-term sustainability.

Work Cited:

Robinson, Kim Stanley. “A Colony in the Sky.” Newsweek. 23 Sept. 1996.

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10. Which of the following statements from the passage below is not a supporting detail for the topic sentence, “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate”?

People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.) A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal — although the “common” language of all these areas is French. But each has paid, and is paying, a different price for this “common” language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things: they each have very different realities to articulate, or control.

Work Cited:

Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” The Price of the Ticket. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. 649-652. Print.

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