Reading Comprehension · Humanities
PrepTest 145 · Section 3 · Passage 4
Questions 20–27
Before you start
Open PrepTest 145, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 20–27, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: contrasts a group of writers with the mainstream and states that the group had reasons for its broader approach
- P2: gives the first reason, an unresolved problem, and describes how leaders split in response
- P3: describes the mainstream approach and the group's worries about where it leads
- P4: adds a twist: the group was itself doing a version of what it distrusted, and closes with a qualified view of their project
Step 2 · The kid passage
Two Ways to Tell the Story of Pinecrest
Most class histories at Pinecrest Elementary tell the past one classroom at a time. The writers of the Bus Riders' Scrapbook did something different: they wrote across schools, following kids who had lived near three different schools. They had good reasons, chief among them that an honest story of the riders would not fit inside one classroom.
First, there was the membership problem. A new rule said bus riders were full Pinecrest students, yet they still could not join after-school teams. Because of this, talk of transferring back to the old school grew loud. Some rider leaders demanded team spots; others urged riders to start a league of their own across town. Most riders wanted to stay, but many were losing faith in Pinecrest.
The usual class histories cheered each class as the hero of the story. They told tales of each class's special spirit and its fated victories. The scrapbook writers were uneasy. Some said that bragging about your class leads straight to grabbing other classes' playground space.
Still, the scrapbook writers were doing some team building of their own. Rebuilding a proud past for the old neighborhood, they gave riders a shared story to stand on. So one could say their across-school approach was its own kind of team spirit: a group with no building of its own, but one story, starting in the old neighborhood.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Bragging Bakers
The Oak Street Bakers sued the Elm Street Bakers. "They brag that their street was born to bake," said the Oak lawyer. "Bragging like that leads to stealing our corner of the market." Mr. Whitfield, for Elm Street, held up an Oak Street flyer. "Your Honor, this flyer says the Oak bakers come from a long, proud line of grandmother bakers, scattered across town but one family at heart." The judge peered over her glasses. "So the Oak bakers object to bragging, while telling a proud story of their own." "In a way," Mr. Whitfield said kindly. "Their story has no shop of its own, but it binds them together." The judge nodded. "Both sides build pride. The question is only how."