“In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. . . . And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand.”
~ Exodus 13:14–16
“May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.”
~ Psalm 25:21
Who could imagine that a movement — evangelical homeschooling — that began so quietly in the 1970s and 1980s would someday generate such a vital and anointed generation that is emerging at the beginning of this century? It is a time to celebrate and to reflect.
The new ACT is an ideal milieu for evangelical Christians to score highly. When I was growing up, eons ago, elite prep schools dominated the college admission classes. Today, the new “elite” are evangelicals, especially homeschooled evangelical graduates. They are the most highly recruited, most highly valued freshmen at secular and Christian schools alike.
I spoke to a Yale recruiter and she told me that, while Yale wants homeschoolers, homeschoolers do not seem to want Yale. They are not applying to Yale. Likewise, I have two distance-learning students who were heavily recruited by Ivy League schools. They both chose local alternatives (a state school and a Christian school).
It is not my purpose to lobby for any particular post-graduate choice, although I found my wife at Harvard — and Intervarsity Fellowship Cambridge is larger than the entire student body at Gordon College (a Christian College) in South Hamilton. Mostly for fiscal reasons, the majority of evangelicals go to secular colleges.
To most evangelical Christians, the modern secular university is a hostile place. It was not always so.
In fact, the American university was built solidly on evangelical principles. There were no so-called “official” “secular” colleges until the rise of the land grant colleges in the middle of the 19th century. An early brochure, published in 1643, stated that the purpose of Harvard University (the oldest American university) was “To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches.”
Harvard’s motto for 300 years was “Christo et Ecclesiae.” In fact, most of the U.S. universities founded before the 20th century had a strongly religious, usually Protestant evangelical Christian character. Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Stanford, Duke, William and Mary, Boston University, Michigan, and the University of California had a decidedly evangelical Christian character in the early years of their existence but abandoned it by the 20th century. By the 1920s, the American university had stepped completely back from its evangelical roots. This was true of almost every American university founded in the first 200 years of our existence.
Readers would be surprised to see how evangelical, Christ-centered early universities were. They had pastors as presidents. These men closely tied the identity of their university to a strong Christian worldview. The core curriculum included Bible courses and Christian theology. These were mandatory Bible courses. All American universities insisted on a doctrinally sound content for sensitive courses and often required that faculty be born-again Christians! Imagine this: the famous historian Frederick Jackson Turner was refused a professorship at Princeton because he was a Unitarian! Chapel attendance was required at Harvard and Yale! It is more than coincidental that the architects who designed early universities designed them to look like churches. At the University of Pittsburgh, for instance, the most prominent building on campus is the Cathedral of Learning.
Universities were founded because early Americans earnestly believed that American society should be governed by evangelical Christian people. They believed that American industry should be run by evangelical Christian entrepreneurs. They believed that American culture should be created by evangelical artists. The early American university was committed to making sure that that happened.
The marriage of spiritual maturity and elite education is a potent combination and to a large degree assured the success of the American experiment. Its divorce may presage its demise.
Drawing Conclusions
What can you infer from this poem by Robert Frost?
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Answer these questions true or false.
True or False. Robert Frost likes to play in the snow.
True or False. Someone must have hurt Frost.
True or False. Frost seems to be unhappy as he writes this poem.
True or False. Frost is writing a poem about fire and ice.
True or False. Frost is writing a poem about love and hatred.
Word Problems
Your church youth group is hosting a fundraising event this weekend. Youth have been pre-selling tickets to the event; adult tickets are $5.00, and child tickets (for kids six years old and under) are $2.50. From past experience, you expect about 10,000 people to attend the event. However, you cannot be sure.
You consult with your ticket-sellers, and discover that they have not been keeping track of how many child tickets they have sold. The tickets are identical, until the ticket-seller punches a hole in the ticket, indicating that it is a child ticket. But they don’t remember how many holes they’ve punched. They only know that they’ve sold 448 tickets for $2460. How much revenue from each of child and adult tickets can you expect?1
???Are you reading 50 to 100 pages a day???
“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”2
— Albert Einstein
Reading Test Insights
The Reading Test is a 40-question, 35-minute test that measures your ability to read and to comprehend reading material. You’re asked to read four passages and answer questions that show your understanding of:
• what is directly stated
• statements with implied meanings
• tone
• literary elements
• logic
• vocabulary words
Specifically, questions will ask you to use critical thinking skills to:
• discern main ideas
• analyze significant details
• understand sequences of events
• make comparisons
• comprehend cause-effect relationships
• determine the meaning of context-dependent words, phrases, and statements
• draw generalizations
• analyze the author’s or narrator’s tone and mood
The test comprises four prose passages that are representative of the level and kind of reading required in first-year college courses; passages on topics in social sciences, natural sciences, prose fiction, and the humanities are included.
As ACT explains, “Each passage is accompanied by a set of multiple-choice test questions. These questions do not test the rote recall of facts from outside the passage, isolated vocabulary items, or rules of formal logic. Instead, the test focuses on the complementary and supportive skills that readers must use in studying written materials across a range of subject areas.”3
Don Quixote4
Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote is a worn-out, older Spanish gentleman who sets off on a great imagined quest to win honor and glory in the name of his imaginary damsel-in-distress, Dulcinea. Don Quixote is much more; he is larger than life. He represents Cervantes’s satire of the 16th-century Spanish aristocracy. Don Quixote longs for a world that does not exist — a world of beauty and achievement. He naively seeks to bring order into this Renaissance world by Middle Age chivalry. But Don Quixote, nearly blind figuratively and literarily, with the best of intentions, harms everyone around him.
As the novel progresses, Don Quixote, with the help of his modern, loyal squire, Sancho, who is able to see things as they are, slowly distinguishes between reality and the pictures in his head. Even though he ceases to attack windmills, he never loses his conviction that fair Dulcinea is his salvation from all heartache.
Suggested Vocabulary Words
- You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardor and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of land to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. (part 1, chapter 1)
- He approved highly of the giant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is always arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred. (part 1, chapter 1)
- Thus setting out, our new-fledged adventurer paced along, talking to himself and saying, “Who knows but that in time to come, when the veracious history of my famous deeds is made known, the sage who writes it, when he has to set forth my first sally in the early morning, will do it after this fashion? ‘Scarce had the rubicund Apollo spread o’er the face of the broad spacious earth the golden threads of his bright hair, scarce had the little birds of painted plumage attuned their notes to hail with dulcet and mellifluous harmony the coming of the rosy Dawn, that, deserting the soft couch of her jealous spouse, was appearing to mortals at the gates and balconies of the Manchegan horizon, when the renowned knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, quitting the lazy down, mounted his celebrated steed Rocinante and began to traverse the ancient and famous Campo de Montiel’ ”; which in fact he was actually traversing. “Happy the age, happy the time,” he continued, “in which shall be made known my deeds of fame, worthy to be moulded in brass, carved in marble, limned in pictures, for a memorial for ever. And thou, O sage magician, whoever thou art, to whom it shall fall to be the chronicler of this wondrous history, forget not, I entreat thee, my good Rocinante, the constant companion of my ways and wanderings.” Presently he broke out again, as if he were love-stricken in earnest, “O Princess Dulcinea, lady of this captive heart, a grievous wrong hast thou done me to drive me forth with scorn, and with inexorable obduracy banish me from the presence of thy beauty. O lady, deign to hold in remembrance this heart, thy vassal, that thus in anguish pines for love of thee.” (part 1, chapter 2)
- Seeing what was going on, Don Quixote said in an angry voice, “Discourteous knight, it ill becomes you to assail one who cannot defend himself; mount your steed and take your lance” (for there was a lance leaning against the oak to which the mare was tied), “and I will make you know that you are behaving as a coward.” The farmer, seeing before him this figure in full armor brandishing a lance over his head, gave himself up for dead, and made answer meekly, “Sir Knight, this youth that I am chastising is my servant, employed by me to watch a flock of sheep that I have hard by, and he is so careless that I lose one every day, and when I punish him for his carelessness and knavery he says I do it out of niggardliness, to escape paying him the wages I owe him, and before God, and on my soul, he lies.” (part 1, chapter 4)
- Such was the end of the Gentleman of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete would not indicate precisely, in order to leave all the towns and villages of La Mancha to contend among themselves for the right to adopt him and claim him as a son, as the seven cities of Greece contended for Homer. The lamentations of Sancho and the niece and housekeeper are omitted here, as well as the new epitaphs upon his tomb. (part 2, chapter 74)
Reading Architectural Designs
What obvious advantages does this house design offer rural, northern Wisconsin homeowners?
At what locations would you predict that roof leaks will occur in the future?
Active/Passive Voice
In active voice sentences the subject does the action. Therefore, there is normally a direct object.
Example: Mary hit the ball.
In passive voice sentences the subject receives the action.
Example: The ball was hit by Mary
The sentence that uses the active voice is stronger, uses fewer words, and clearly shows who performs the action. The sentence that uses the passive voice is weaker and less direct. In writing, especially on the ACT, try to use active voice.
Directions: Rewrite the passive voice sentences as active voice sentences.
Passive: The deer was hit by the car.
Active: ___________________________________________________
Passive: The football stadium was built by workers in five months.
Active: ___________________________________________________
Directions: Rewrite the active voice sentences as passive voice sentences.
Active: Rosco finished his homework.
Passive: __________________________________________________
Active: My dog practices his tricks.
Passive: __________________________________________________
“And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie, that kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”5
— John Milton
Reading for Details
Before the building of regular playhouses the itinerant troupes of actors were accustomed, except when received into private homes, to give their performances in any place that chance provided, such as open street-squares, barns, town-halls, moot-courts, schoolhouses, churches, and — most frequently of all, perhaps — the yards of inns. These yards, especially those of carriers’ inns, were admirably suited to dramatic representations, consisting as they did of a large open court surrounded by two or more galleries. Many examples of such inn-yards are still to be seen in various parts of England. In the yard a temporary platform — a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads — could be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be provided for the actors; the rabble — always the larger and more enthusiastic part of the audience — could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made and very serviceable theatre was always at the command of the players; and it seems to have been frequently made use of from the very beginning of professionalism in acting.6 (Joseph Quincy Adams, Shakespearean Playhouses)
What is the main idea of this passage?
- Drama developed slowly in Britain.
- The first plays were held in open courtyards.
- The open courtyard was the ideal location for a play.
- Shakespeare took his plays from open courtyards to the Globe Theatre.
Which of the following paragraphs most likely would follow the above paragraph?
- In the smaller towns the itinerant players might, through a letter of recommendation from their noble patron, or through the good will of some local dignitary, secure the use of the town hall, or the schoolhouse, or even of the village church. In such buildings, of course, they could give their performances more advantageously, for they could place money-takers at the doors, and exact adequate payment from all who entered. In the great city of London, however, the players were necessarily forced to make use almost entirely of public inn-yards — an arrangement which, we may well believe, they found far from satisfactory. Not being masters of the inns, they were merely tolerated; they had to content themselves with hastily provided and inadequate stage facilities; and, worst of all, for their recompense they had to trust to a hat collection, at best a poor means of securing money. Often too, no doubt, they could not get the use of a given inn-yard when they most needed it, as on holidays and festive occasions; and at all times they had to leave the public in uncertainty as to where or when plays were to be seen. Their street parade, with the noise of trumpets and drums, might gather a motley crowd for the yard, but in so large a place as London it was inadequate for advertisement among the better classes. And as the troupes of the city increased in wealth and dignity, and as the playgoing public grew in size and importance, the old makeshift arrangement became more and more unsatisfactory.
- The hostility of the city to the drama was unquestionably the main cause of the erection of the first playhouse; yet combined with this were two other important causes, usually overlooked. The first was the need of a building specially designed to meet the requirements of the players and of the public, a need yearly growing more urgent as plays became more complex, acting developed into a finer art, and audiences increased in dignity as well as in size. The second and the more immediate cause was the appearance of a man with business insight enough to see that such a building would pay. The first playhouse, we should remember, was not erected by a troupe of actors, but by a money-seeking individual. Although he was himself an actor, and the manager of a troupe, he did not, it seems, take the troupe into his confidence. In complete independence of any theatrical organization he proceeded with the erection of his building as a private speculation; and, we are told, he dreamed of the “continual great profit and commodity through plays that should be used there every week.”
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