Section B
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to each
statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which
the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is
marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer
Sheet 2.
Make Stuff, Fail, And Learn While You’re At It
A. We’ve always been a hands-on, do-it-yourself kind of nation. Ben Franklin, one of
America’s founding fathers, didn’t just invent the lightning rod. His creations include glasses,
innovative stoves and more.
B. Franklin, who was largely self-taught, may have been a genius, but he wasn’t really an
exception when it comes to American making and creativity.
C. The personal computing revolution and philosophy of disruptive innovation of Silicon
Valley grew, in part, out of the creations of the Homebrew Computer Club, Which was founded in
a garage in Menlo Park, California, in the mid-1970s. Members — including guys named Jobs and
Wozniak — started making and inventing things they couldn’t buy.
D. So it’s no surprise that the Maker Movement today is thriving in communities and some
schools across America. Making is available to ordinary people who aren’t tied to big companies,
big defense labs or research universities. The maker philosophy echoes old ideas advocated by
John Dewey, Montessori, and even ancient Greek philosophers, as we pointed out recently.
E. These maker spaces are often outside of classrooms, and are serving an important
educational function. The Maker Movement is rediscovering learning by doing, which is Dewey’s
phrase from 100 years ago. We are rediscovering Dewey and Montessori and a lot of the practices
that they pioneered that have been forgotten or at least put aside. A maker space is a place which
can be in a school, but it doesn’t look like a classroom. It can be in a library. It can be out in the
community. It has tools and materials. It’s a place where you get to make things based on your
interest and on what you’re learning to do.
F. Ideas about learning by doing have struggled to become mainstream educationally, despite
being old concepts from Dewey and Montessori, Plato and Aristotle, and in the American Contcxt,
Ralph Emerson, on the value of experience and self-reliance. It’s not necessarily an efficient way
to learn. We learn, in a sense, by trial and error. Learning from experience is something that takes
time and patience. It’s very individualized. If your goal is to have standardized approaches to
learning, where everybody learns the same thing at the same time in the same way, then learning
by doing doesn’t really fit that mold anymore. It’s not the world of textbooks. It’s not the world of
testing.
G. Learning by doing may not be efficient, but it is effective. Project-based learning has
grown in popularity with teachers and administrators. However, project-based learning is not
making. Although there is a connection, there is also a distinction. The difference lies in whether
the project is in a sense defined and developed by the student or whether it’s assigned by a teacher.
We’ll all get the kids to build a small boat. We are all going to learn about X, Y, and Z. That tends
to be one form of project-based learning.
H. I really believe the core idea of making is to have an idea within your head — or you just
borrow it from someone — and begin to develop it , repeat it and improve it. Then, realize that