EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 17 of 120

Correct — A, (a) Education will develop multiple competencies for sustainable development among people all over the world. Start with the fact that decides how this item has to be read at all: its printed stem is a single line, and it names no passage. The Directions and the comprehension passage were printed once, above the first item of this set, and they govern this question too. Answered without them, the question has no answer; answered with them, it has an easy one. The author asks the very same question in the passage — what are the many roles of education in sustainable development — and answers it in the sentence immediately following. Education’s purpose, he writes, is transformative in nature, in the sense that it should widen one’s worldview, make one question ‘unsustainability’, and help one build competencies to address global challenges and be accommodated into a global system. Option (a) is that sentence restated. ‘Multiple competencies’ answers to the author’s ‘many roles’ and to his ‘competencies’ in the plural; ‘for sustainable development’ answers to the question he is putting; and ‘among people all over the world’ answers to ‘global challenges’ and ‘a global system’, and is reinforced later in the paragraph, where he says the challenges of this century are global in nature, require cooperation beyond national boundaries, and oblige us to see ourselves as citizens of the world. Notice also what the author sets this against. He grants that in a traditional sense education helps one understand the world and prepares people for a job market — and then says its purpose goes beyond that. The keyed option is on the far side of that ‘beyond’, which is where the passage places the answer.

• (b)Education will provide books to read on sustainable development — ‘Education will provide books to read on sustainable development’ has no support anywhere in the passage — books are never mentioned — and it fails on the author’s argument as well. He explicitly moves past the narrow, instrumental picture of education, conceding that in a traditional sense it prepares people for a job market and then insisting that its purpose is transformative. Reducing education to the supply of reading matter is precisely the view the paragraph is written against, so this option is wrong both for what the passage does not say and for what it does.
• (c)Education will increase the global capital — ‘Education will increase the global capital’ is a word-echo trap. The passage does contain something that sounds like it — globalization, the author says, is sometimes merely seen as global capitalism — but that phrase is a description of how globalization is reductively viewed, not a role assigned to education, and it is dismissed rather than endorsed. Nothing in the passage says that education increases capital of any kind. An option built from words that occur in the text is the commonest shape of a comprehension distractor, and the defence is to ask not whether the words appear but whether they appear doing this job.
• (d)Education will reduce interdependence of the people — ‘Education will reduce interdependence of the people’ runs against the passage outright. The author states that whether we like it or not we live in a highly interconnected and interdependent world, that 21st century challenges are global in nature and require cooperation beyond national boundaries, and that we must see ourselves as citizens of the world. Interdependence is treated as the condition to be understood and worked within, not as something to be reduced, and education’s role is to build the competencies for exactly that. The option reverses the direction of the argument.

Two things are being taught by this item, and the first is structural. A comprehension set prints its Directions and its passage once, over the first question. Every question after it is a fragment. This item is the clearest case in the paper: ‘What is the role of Education in sustainable development ?’ is the whole of what appears under the number, and a candidate who has turned two pages and lost the passage cannot answer it from anything on the page in front of him. The habit that protects against this is to read the Directions and the passage first and to keep them in view while working through all five questions, treating the set as one long item rather than five short ones. The second is a point about the author’s argument. He builds the paragraph as a two-step: in a traditional sense education helps one understand the world and prepares people for a job market — that is the concession — and then, beyond this, its purpose is transformative, widening the worldview, prompting one to question unsustainability, and building competencies for global challenges. Comprehension items on a passage of this shape almost always key the second step, because the first is what an untrained reader would have said anyway. Locating the word that marks the turn — here ‘Beyond this’ and the phrase ‘in a traditional sense’ — puts you on the sentence the answer will come from.

Q17 is the second item of the comprehension set that closes Part A, and it is governed by the Directions and passage printed above Q16. Those Directions require the answer to rest solely on the content of the passage and the opinion of the author. That instruction matters here in a particular way. The passage makes large claims about what education can do — that it should widen worldviews, prompt people to question unsustainability, and equip them to be accommodated into a global system. Whether education in fact achieves those things is a real question, and a candidate may have views about it. The Directions put those views out of court: the item asks what role the author assigns to education, and the answer is the one he assigns. Reading a passage as a report of its author’s position, rather than as a set of propositions to be agreed or disagreed with, is the single most useful adjustment a candidate can make before a comprehension set.

• This item’s printed stem is one line long; the Directions and the passage were printed once above the first item of the set and govern all five.
• The passage puts the same question the item asks — what are the many roles of education in sustainable development — and answers it in the next sentence.
• The author’s answer is that education’s purpose is transformative: it should widen one’s worldview, make one question ‘unsustainability’, and help one build competencies to address global challenges.
• The passage treats interdependence as a condition to be worked within, saying that 21st century challenges are global and require cooperation beyond national boundaries.
• ‘Global capitalism’ appears in the passage only as a reductive view of globalization, and is not a role attributed to education.

• Trying to answer a follower item from its own printed stem. This one names no passage and cannot be answered without the text printed over the first item of the set.
• Choosing the option that describes education as most people would describe it. The passage explicitly moves beyond the traditional, instrumental account.
• Marking an option because its words appear in the passage. ‘Global capital’ echoes ‘global capitalism’, which the author mentions only to set aside.
• Reversing the author’s direction. The passage treats interdependence as a fact to be lived with, never as something education should reduce.

In this set the questions descend through the passage in roughly the order of its sentences, and this one is answered by the sentence that follows the author’s own rhetorical question. The distractor set is built on a standard pattern — one option unsupported by anything in the text, one built from the text’s vocabulary in a different role, and one that reverses a claim the passage actually makes. Recognising those three shapes is worth as much in this section as reading speed, because it tells you what to check each option for.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A passage reads : ‘In a conventional view, an inspection exists to detect default. Beyond this, its real purpose is to leave the establishment better able to comply than it was before.’ What does the author regard as the real purpose of an inspection ?

  • (a)To detect default in the establishment
  • (b)To leave the establishment better able to comply
  • (c)To record the conventional view of inspections
  • (d)To reduce the number of inspections needed

  Answer(b) To leave the establishment better able to comply — the author concedes the conventional view and then marks his own position with ‘Beyond this’, so the answer lies past the turn. Detecting default is the view he sets aside, and the other two options are not stated at all.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A comprehension item’s printed stem refers to ‘the author’s second objection’ but names no passage. What has happened ?

  • (a)The item is defective and should be left unanswered
  • (b)The passage and Directions were printed over an earlier item of the same set and govern this one too
  • (c)The item is testing general knowledge rather than comprehension
  • (d)The objection must be inferred from the options alone

  Answer(b) The passage and Directions were printed over an earlier item of the same set and govern this one too — in a five-item comprehension set only the first item carries the passage, and the followers print nothing but their own question.