"READING PASSAGE OF THE WEEK"

In the United States the per capita costs of
schooling have risen almost as fast as the cost of
medical treatment. But increased treatment by both
doctors and teachers has shown steadily declining
results. Medical expenses concentrated on those
above forty-five have doubled several times over a
period of forty years with a resulting 3 percent
increase in the life expectancy of men. The
increase in educational expenditures has produced
even stranger results; otherwise President Nixon
could not have been moved this spring to promise
that every child shall soon have the “Right to
Read” before leaving school.
In the United States it would take eighty
billion dollars per year to provide what educators
regard as equal treatment for all in grammar and
high school. This is well over twice the $36 billion
now being spent. Independent cost projections
prepared at HEW and at the University of Florida
indicate that by 1974 the comparable figures will
be $107 billion as against the $45 billion now projected,
and these figures wholly omit the enormous
costs of what is called “higher education,” for
which demand is growing even faster. The United
States, which spent nearly eighty billion dollars in
1969 for “defense,” including its deployment in
Vietnam, is obviously too poor to provide equal
schooling. The President’s committee for the study
of school finance should ask not how to support or
how to trim such increasing costs, but how they can
be avoided.
Equal obligatory schooling must be recognized
as at least economically unfeasible. In Latin
America the amount of public money spent on each
graduate student is between 350 and 1,500 times
the amount spent on the median citizen (that is, the
citizen who holds the middle ground between the
poorest and the richest). In the United States the
discrepancy is smaller, but the discrimination is
keener. The richest parents, some 10 percent, can
afford private education for their children and help
them to benefit from foundation grants. But in
addition they obtain ten times the per capita
amount of public funds if this is compared with the
per capita expenditure made on the children of the
10 percent who are poorest. The principal reasons
for this are that rich children stay longer in school,
that a year in a university is disproportionately
more expensive than a year in high school, and that
most private universities depend—at least
indirectly—on tax-derived finances.
Obligatory schooling inevitably polarizes a
society; it also grades the nations of the world
according to an international caste system.
Countries are rated like castes whose educational
dignity is determined by the average years of
schooling of its citizens, a rating which is closely
related to per capita gross national product, and
much more painful.

1. Which one of the following best expresses the
main idea of the passage?
(A) The educational shortcomings of the
United States, in contrast to those of
Latin America, are merely the result of
poor allocation of available resources.
(B) Both education and medical care are
severely underfunded.
(C) Defense spending is sapping funds
which would be better spent in
education.
(D) Obligatory schooling must be scrapped
if the goal of educational equality is to
be realized.
(E) Obligatory education does not and
cannot provide equal education.

2. The author most likely would agree with which
one of the following solutions to the problems
presented by obligatory education?
(A) Education should not be obligatory at all.
(B) Education should not be obligatory for
those who cannot afford it.
(C) More money should be diverted to education
for the poorest.
(D) Countries should cooperate to establish
common minimal educational standards.
(E) Future spending should be capped.

3. According to the passage, education is like
health care in all of the following ways
EXCEPT:
(A) It has reached a point of diminishing
returns, increased spending no longer
results in significant improvement.
(B) It has an inappropriate “more is better”
philosophy.
(C) It is unfairly distributed between rich and
poor.
(D) The amount of money being spent on
older students is increasing.
(E) Its cost has increased nearly as fast.

4. Why does the author consider the results from
increased educational expenditures to be “even
stranger” than those from increased medical
expenditures?
(A) The aging of the population should have
had an impact only on medical care, not
on education.
(B) The “Right to Read” should be a bare
minimum, not a Presidential ideal.
(C) Educational spending has shown even
poorer results than spending on health
care, despite greater increases.
(D) Education has become even more discriminatory
than health care.
(E) It inevitably polarizes society.

5. Which one of the following most accurately
characterizes the author’s attitude with respect
to obligatory schooling?
(A) qualified admiration
(B) critical
(C) neutral
(D) ambivalent
(E) resentful

6. By stating “In Latin America the amount of
public money spent on each graduate student is
between 350 and 1,500 times the amount spent
on the median citizen” and “In the United States
the discrepancy is smaller” the author implies
that
(A) equal education is possible in the United
States but not in Latin America.
(B) equal education for all at the graduate
level is an unrealistic ideal.
(C) educational spending is more efficient in
the United States.
(D) higher education is more expensive than
lower education both in Latin America
and in the United States, but more so in
Latin America.
(E) underfunding of lower education is a
world-wide problem.
TeamLRN