T he r eader ’

 
 
 

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Chapter 12, Reading in the Social Sciences 55 
 
NAME_______________________________DATE___________________SCORE__
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TEST B
 
After reading the selection regarding raising a child, answer the multiple choice questions that 
follow
. 
Today, as in times past, the most important and also the most difficult task in raising a 
child is helping him to find meaning in life. Many growth experiences are needed to achieve 
this. The child, as he develops, must learn step by step to understand himself better; with this he 
becomes more able to understand others, and eventually can relate to them in ways which are 
mutually satisfying and meaningful. 
To find deeper meaning, one must become able to transcend the narrow confines of a 
self-centered existence and believe that he will make a significant contribution to life--if not right 
now, then at some future time. This feeling is necessary if a person is to be satisfied with himself 
and with what he is doing. In order not to be at the mercy of the vagaries of life, one must 
develop inner resources, so that emotions, imagination, and intellect mutually support and enrich 
one another. Our positive feelings give us the strength to develop our rationality; only hope for 
the future can sustain us in the adversities we unavoidably encounter. 
What experiences in a child’s life are most suited to promote his ability to find meaning 
in his life--to endow life in general with more meaning? Regarding this task, nothing is more 
important than the impact of parents and others who take care of the child; second in importance 
is our cultural heritage, when transmitted to the child in the right manner. When children are 
young it is fairy tales that carry such information best. 
[Bettelheim, Bruno.
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.
New York: Vintage Books, 1977, pp. 3-4.]
1. According to the author, the most important task in raising a child is to 
A. teach the child discipline. 
B. enhance the child’s imagination. 
C. help the child find meaning in life. 

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56 Chapter 13, Reading in the Life and Natural Sciences 
2. This excerpt was probably written by
A. a psychologist. 
B. an elementary school teacher. 
C. a team of pediatricians. 
3. What is the most important influence on a child’s life? 
A. education. 
B. parents. 
C. fairy tales. 
4. After reading the last paragraph, what would the author more than likely discuss next? 
A. cultural heritage 
B. literature 
C. fairy tales 
After reading the selection below on friendship between men and women, answer the multiple-
choice questions. 
Name one famous friendship between a woman and a man—one admired, esteemed, 
nonromantic, nonsexual friendship between a man and a woman in history or literature. It’s not 
easy. In every culture, friendship between the sexes has been inconceivable or forbidden.
Inconceivable because women were considered men’s inferiors; forbidden because each woman 
was chattel belonging to either her father or husband.
In my book, 
Growing Up Free
, I argued against the notion of inborn differences. I tried 
to show how females and males are programmed to be different. Most parents rear male and 
female children as if preparing them to live in two different worlds—giving them different toys, 
books, rules, tools, and boundaries and different messages about sex-appropriate emotions.
Therefore, before they reach school age, girls and boys have become strangers to one another, 
with incompatible play habits, different ideas of fun, and few grounds for friendship.
In school, sex enmity can be exacerbated by lining up girls and boys in separate rows, 
pitting them against each other in spelling bees or dodge ball. Children learn fast that to cross the 
lines of sex demarcation is to risk the invective “sissy,” “tomboy,” or worse. Any sixth-grade 
teacher knows that the best way to humiliate a boy is to put him wherever the girls congregate. 
Are the differences between the sexes—culturally imposed though they are—going to 
forever keep up apart? How long before women and men can be friends with each other the way 
each of us can be friends with someone of our own sex?