SAT Prep - Question List

441. School Communications Plan

Given today’s technologies, the face of communication has changed. This is true both personally and professionally within public school systems. The use of media has created the need for schools to be equipped with a school-wide community relations plan that works to keep everyone comprised in what is occurring and is overseen by a public relations person. This person is responsible for developing and executing the communications that will occur using a variety of mediums, including print, electronic, media, and face-to-face communication. As noted in the book, The Human Factor, school leaders must recognize the immense need to create an accurate picture of the attitudes, concerns, and other perceptions that are present in the community, (Johnson 2013).
A school-wide community relations plan creates structure and organization, as well as establishing guidelines for systematic protocol in the use of communication processes, which greatly enhances the internal and external communications processes. Given the reality that many people are just waiting for schools to slip up and make a mistake, school-wide public relations plans are designed to defuse negative situations through positive news that promotes the achievement and recognition of students and staff (Bonk 1999). In maintaining a proactive approach, the positive can counteract the negative that often gets highlighted. The beauty of having a school-wide community plan in place is that positive communication within the school will encourage those invested in the school and the community to recognize all of the “good” that is occurring, thus positively impacting the school’s population.
As previously noted, technology has reduced the number of face-to-face meetings that occur in public schools; these have been largely replaced with technology-based correspondence. The communications process can be significantly enhanced and eased by the use of social media devices. While many schools see the negative aspects of social media forums, these processes can assist in communicating with wide, varied audiences based on specific circumstances, (Larkin 2013). As noted by Gordon (2012), public school districts are equipped with technology, but it is often not used to harness the full power of today’s communication devices.



Which of the following statements is inaccurate according to the information provided in the passage?

442. School Communications Plan

Given today’s technologies, the face of communication has changed. This is true both personally and professionally within public school systems. The use of media has created the need for schools to be equipped with a school-wide community relations plan that works to keep everyone comprised in what is occurring and is overseen by a public relations person. This person is responsible for developing and executing the communications that will occur using a variety of mediums, including print, electronic, media, and face-to-face communication. As noted in the book, The Human Factor, school leaders must recognize the immense need to create an accurate picture of the attitudes, concerns, and other perceptions that are present in the community, (Johnson 2013).
A school-wide community relations plan creates structure and organization, as well as establishing guidelines for systematic protocol in the use of communication processes, which greatly enhances the internal and external communications processes. Given the reality that many people are just waiting for schools to slip up and make a mistake, school-wide public relations plans are designed to defuse negative situations through positive news that promotes the achievement and recognition of students and staff (Bonk 1999). In maintaining a proactive approach, the positive can counteract the negative that often gets highlighted. The beauty of having a school-wide community plan in place is that positive communication within the school will encourage those invested in the school and the community to recognize all of the “good” that is occurring, thus positively impacting the school’s population.
As previously noted, technology has reduced the number of face-to-face meetings that occur in public schools; these have been largely replaced with technology-based correspondence. The communications process can be significantly enhanced and eased by the use of social media devices. While many schools see the negative aspects of social media forums, these processes can assist in communicating with wide, varied audiences based on specific circumstances, (Larkin 2013). As noted by Gordon (2012), public school districts are equipped with technology, but it is often not used to harness the full power of today’s communication devices.



As used in the first paragraph, the word comprised most likely means:

443. School Communications Plan

Given today’s technologies, the face of communication has changed. This is true both personally and professionally within public school systems. The use of media has created the need for schools to be equipped with a school-wide community relations plan that works to keep everyone comprised in what is occurring and is overseen by a public relations person. This person is responsible for developing and executing the communications that will occur using a variety of mediums, including print, electronic, media, and face-to-face communication. As noted in the book, The Human Factor, school leaders must recognize the immense need to create an accurate picture of the attitudes, concerns, and other perceptions that are present in the community, (Johnson 2013).
A school-wide community relations plan creates structure and organization, as well as establishing guidelines for systematic protocol in the use of communication processes, which greatly enhances the internal and external communications processes. Given the reality that many people are just waiting for schools to slip up and make a mistake, school-wide public relations plans are designed to defuse negative situations through positive news that promotes the achievement and recognition of students and staff (Bonk 1999). In maintaining a proactive approach, the positive can counteract the negative that often gets highlighted. The beauty of having a school-wide community plan in place is that positive communication within the school will encourage those invested in the school and the community to recognize all of the “good” that is occurring, thus positively impacting the school’s population.
As previously noted, technology has reduced the number of face-to-face meetings that occur in public schools; these have been largely replaced with technology-based correspondence. The communications process can be significantly enhanced and eased by the use of social media devices. While many schools see the negative aspects of social media forums, these processes can assist in communicating with wide, varied audiences based on specific circumstances, (Larkin 2013). As noted by Gordon (2012), public school districts are equipped with technology, but it is often not used to harness the full power of today’s communication devices.



Which of the following audiences would be LEAST interested in this passage?

444. The Senses of Insects By Auguste Forel
Title: The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science I. -Insect Activity and Instinct
This subject is one of great interest, as much from the standpoint of biology as from that of comparative psychology. The very peculiar mechanism of instincts always has its starting-point in sensations. To comprehend this mechanism it is essential to understand thoroughly the organs of sense and their special functions.
It is further necessary to study the co-ordination which exists between the action of the different senses, and leads to their intimate connection with the functions of the nerve-centres, that is to say, with the specially instinctive intelligence of insects. The whole question is, therefore, a chapter of comparative psychology, a chapter in which it is necessary to take careful note of every factor, to place oneself, so to speak, on a level with the mind of an insect, and, above all, to avoid the anthropomorphic errors with which works upon the subject are filled.
At the same time the other extreme must equally be avoided-"anthropophobia," which at all costs desires to see in every living organism a "machine," forgetting that a "machine" which lives, that is to say, which grows, takes in nutriment, and strikes a balance between income and expenditure, which, in a word, continually reconstructs itself, is not a "machine," but something entirely different. In other words, it is necessary to steer clear of two dangers. We must avoid (1) identifying the mind of an insect with our own, but, above all, (2) imagining that we, with what knowledge we possess, can reconstruct the mind by our chemical and physical laws.
On the other hand, we have to recognise the fact that this mind, and the sensory functions which put it on its guard, are derived, just as with our human selves, from the primitive protoplasmic life. This life, so far as it is specialised in the nervous system by nerve irritability and its connections with the muscular system, is manifested under two aspects. These may be likened to two branches of one trunk.
(a) Automatic or instinctive activity. This, though perfected by repetition, is definitely inherited. It is uncontrollable and constant in effect, adapted to the circumstances of the special life of the race in question. It is this curious instinctive adaptation-which is so intelligent when it carries out its proper task, so stupid and incapable when diverted to some other purpose-that has deceived so many scientists and philosophers by its insidious analogy with humanly constructed machines.
But, automatic as it may appear, instinct is not invariable. In the first place, it presents a racial evolution which of itself alone already demonstrates a certain degree of plasticity from generation to generation. It presents, further, individual variations which are more distinct as it is less deeply fixed by heredity. Thus the divergent instincts of two varieties, e. g. , of insects, present more individual variability and adaptability than do those instincts common to all species of a genus. In short, if we carefully study the behaviour of each individual of a species of insects with a developed brain (as has been done by P. Huber, Lubbock, Wasmann, and myself, among others, for bees, wasps, and ants), we are not long in finding noteworthy differences, especially when we put the instinct under abnormal conditions. We then force the nervous activity of these insects to present a second and plastic aspect, which to a large extent has been hidden from us under their enormously developed instinct.
(b) The plastic or adaptive activity is by no means, as has been so often suggested, a derivative of instinct. It is primitive. It is even the fundamental condition of the evolution of life. The living being is distinguished by its power of adaptation; even the amoeba is plastic. But in order that one individual may adapt itself to a host of conditions and possibilities, as is the case with the higher mammals and especially with man, the brain requires an enormous quantity of nerve elements. But this is not the case with the fixed and specialised adaptation of instinct.
In secondary automatism, or habit, which we observe in ourselves, it is easy to study how this activity, derived from plastic activity, and ever becoming more prompt, complex, and sure (technical habits), necessitates less and less expenditure of nerve effort. It is very difficult to understand how inherited instinct, hereditary automatism, could have originated from the plastic activities of our ancestors. It seems as if a very slow selection, among individuals best adapted in consequence of fortunate parentage, might perhaps account for it.
To sum up, every animal possesses two kinds of activity in varying degrees, sometimes one, sometimes the other predominating. In the lowest beings they are both rudimentary. In insects, special automatic activity reaches the summit of development and predominance; in man, on the contrary, with his great brain development, plastic activity is elevated to an extraordinary height, above all by language, and before all by written language, which substitutes graphic fixation for secondary automatism, and allows the accumulation outside the brain of the knowledge of past generations, thus serving his plastic activity, at once the adapter and combiner of what the past has bequeathed to it.



Which of these abilities most helps insects to survive?

445. The Senses of Insects By Auguste Forel
Title: The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science I. -Insect Activity and Instinct
This subject is one of great interest, as much from the standpoint of biology as from that of comparative psychology. The very peculiar mechanism of instincts always has its starting-point in sensations. To comprehend this mechanism it is essential to understand thoroughly the organs of sense and their special functions.
It is further necessary to study the co-ordination which exists between the action of the different senses, and leads to their intimate connection with the functions of the nerve-centres, that is to say, with the specially instinctive intelligence of insects. The whole question is, therefore, a chapter of comparative psychology, a chapter in which it is necessary to take careful note of every factor, to place oneself, so to speak, on a level with the mind of an insect, and, above all, to avoid the anthropomorphic errors with which works upon the subject are filled.
At the same time the other extreme must equally be avoided-"anthropophobia," which at all costs desires to see in every living organism a "machine," forgetting that a "machine" which lives, that is to say, which grows, takes in nutriment, and strikes a balance between income and expenditure, which, in a word, continually reconstructs itself, is not a "machine," but something entirely different. In other words, it is necessary to steer clear of two dangers. We must avoid (1) identifying the mind of an insect with our own, but, above all, (2) imagining that we, with what knowledge we possess, can reconstruct the mind by our chemical and physical laws.
On the other hand, we have to recognise the fact that this mind, and the sensory functions which put it on its guard, are derived, just as with our human selves, from the primitive protoplasmic life. This life, so far as it is specialised in the nervous system by nerve irritability and its connections with the muscular system, is manifested under two aspects. These may be likened to two branches of one trunk.
(a) Automatic or instinctive activity. This, though perfected by repetition, is definitely inherited. It is uncontrollable and constant in effect, adapted to the circumstances of the special life of the race in question. It is this curious instinctive adaptation-which is so intelligent when it carries out its proper task, so stupid and incapable when diverted to some other purpose-that has deceived so many scientists and philosophers by its insidious analogy with humanly constructed machines.
But, automatic as it may appear, instinct is not invariable. In the first place, it presents a racial evolution which of itself alone already demonstrates a certain degree of plasticity from generation to generation. It presents, further, individual variations which are more distinct as it is less deeply fixed by heredity. Thus the divergent instincts of two varieties, e. g. , of insects, present more individual variability and adaptability than do those instincts common to all species of a genus. In short, if we carefully study the behaviour of each individual of a species of insects with a developed brain (as has been done by P. Huber, Lubbock, Wasmann, and myself, among others, for bees, wasps, and ants), we are not long in finding noteworthy differences, especially when we put the instinct under abnormal conditions. We then force the nervous activity of these insects to present a second and plastic aspect, which to a large extent has been hidden from us under their enormously developed instinct.
(b) The plastic or adaptive activity is by no means, as has been so often suggested, a derivative of instinct. It is primitive. It is even the fundamental condition of the evolution of life. The living being is distinguished by its power of adaptation; even the amoeba is plastic. But in order that one individual may adapt itself to a host of conditions and possibilities, as is the case with the higher mammals and especially with man, the brain requires an enormous quantity of nerve elements. But this is not the case with the fixed and specialised adaptation of instinct.
In secondary automatism, or habit, which we observe in ourselves, it is easy to study how this activity, derived from plastic activity, and ever becoming more prompt, complex, and sure (technical habits), necessitates less and less expenditure of nerve effort. It is very difficult to understand how inherited instinct, hereditary automatism, could have originated from the plastic activities of our ancestors. It seems as if a very slow selection, among individuals best adapted in consequence of fortunate parentage, might perhaps account for it.
To sum up, every animal possesses two kinds of activity in varying degrees, sometimes one, sometimes the other predominating. In the lowest beings they are both rudimentary. In insects, special automatic activity reaches the summit of development and predominance; in man, on the contrary, with his great brain development, plastic activity is elevated to an extraordinary height, above all by language, and before all by written language, which substitutes graphic fixation for secondary automatism, and allows the accumulation outside the brain of the knowledge of past generations, thus serving his plastic activity, at once the adapter and combiner of what the past has bequeathed to it.



When the author compares insects to machines, what makes this comparison inaccurate?