Reading Comprehension · Humanities
PrepTest 115 · Section 3 · Passage 2
Questions 9–16
Before you start
Open PrepTest 115, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 9–16, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: names two audiences with competing interests and says most earlier studies took only one side's view
- P2: gives a detailed example of a prominent expert's interpretation
- P3: contrasts two ways of reading, explains why one group prefers the hidden reading, and criticizes the expert for ignoring or reshaping cases that do not fit, noting that readers with other assumptions see other meanings
- P4: charges the expert with hiding one side's conduct, cites newer research that doubts the expert's picture, and diagnoses a wider social need behind it
Step 2 · The kid passage
Who Is the Snack Raid Game Really For?
Playground games speak to two crowds that sometimes clash: the grown-up recess monitors and the kids. Almost every study of these games takes the monitors' side, hunting for neat lessons that every kid ought to learn.
Take Snack Raid. The game starts when the monitors gobble the whole cookie tray themselves. The kids then sneak to Cookie Mountain (the big slide), slip past the Gobbler, grab a sack of paper cookies, and carry it back to share with the monitors. Playground expert Dr. Pemberton says the game is really about kids who learn to stop whining and stop leaning on grown-ups. Kids who return with cookies, he says, turn from pests into helpers.
You can read a game two ways: by what plainly happens, or by hunting for hidden lessons. Grown-ups often prefer the hidden kind, because the plain kind shows monitors acting selfishly. Pemberton likes games where a kid misbehaves and gets a deserved scolding. Games that don't fit he skips or quietly retells. Kids from other schools, with different expectations, read the same games another way and find no strict rules in them at all.
Pemberton treats every game as fueled by kids' wishes for treats and payback, and so he hides how monitors really act, from harsh to spoiling. Happily, newer studies have cast doubt on his picture of greedy kids and blameless grown-ups. Our habit of excusing grown-ups makes kids the only wrongdoers and endless students, so play must always be useful instead of just fun.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Scavenger Hunt Lesson
At a camp hearing, expert witness Dr. Lark testified that the camp scavenger hunt is "really" about lazy campers learning to work. Mr. Whitfield rose, suspenders gleaming. "Dr. Lark, how does the hunt begin?" "The counselors skip breakfast duty and hide the pancakes." "And your lesson mentions that?" "It is not the important part." "So the counselors' slip vanishes, and the campers become the problem. Your Honor, campers from three other camps read the hunt as plain fun, no lesson at all. And newer camp studies doubt the idea of lazy campers and perfect counselors." The judge set down her pen. "So the reading depends on what the reader walks in expecting. Noted."