ACT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student

The British evangelical Dorothy Sayers writes:

The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man — and the dogma is the drama. [The central doctrine of Christianity is a tale of] the time when God was the under-dog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men He had made, and the men He had made broke Him and killed Him. Nobody is compelled to believe a single word of this remarkable story. But the divine Dramatist has set out to convince us.1

How true Dorothy Sayers’ words are! I am preparing for my sermon this weekend, Romans 4, and I am struck again at how rich is the story surrounding our faith! We say in a negative way, “Don’t make so much drama!” But no matter what drama life may hold, we can never eclipse the drama we read in the gospel.

But we try. Television has become the command center of our new epistemology. It promotes shallow thinking and has pretty well killed reading and rhetoric. The clearest way to see through a culture is to see how it speaks to itself. The television has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of public discourse. Truth is not and can never be show business, and Americans want show business. This is one danger of our facile Christian culture.

Neil Postman writes, “We are by now into a second generation of children for whom television has been their first and most accessible teacher and, for many, their most reliable companion and friend. To put it plainly, television is the command center of the new epistemology . . . there is no subject of public interest . . . that does not find its way into television. Which means that all public understanding of these subjects is shaped by the biases of television . . . television has gradually become our culture.”

Postman continues, “Television has become, so to speak, the background radiation of the social and intellectual universe, the all-but-imperceptible residue of the electronic big bang of a century past, so familiar and so thoroughly integrated with American culture that we no longer hear its faint hissing in the background or see the flickering grey light. This, in turn, means that its epistemology goes largely unnoticed. And the peekaboo world it has constructed around us no longer seems even strange.”

“There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have changed. Our culture’s adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now almost complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane.”2

Young people! Turn off the television and read a good book! It will inspire your heart and increase your ACT score!

OCABULARY

Democracy in America3

Alexis de Tocqueville

Coming from old, sedentary Europe, 25-year-old Tocqueville was fascinated by America’s relatively free and egalitarian society. Having never had an aristocracy, America had taken democracy to its natural limits. In America, he saw Europe’s future; indeed, the world’s future!

Suggested Vocabulary Words

Through their means man acquires a kind of preternatural power over the future lot of his fellow-creatures. When the legislator has regulated the law of inheritance, he may rest from his labor. The machine once put in motion will go on for ages, and advance, as if self-guided, towards a given point. When framed in a particular manner, this law unites, draws together, and vests property and power in a few hands: its tendency is clearly aristocratic. On opposite principles its action is still more rapid; it divides, distributes, and disperses both property and power. Alarmed by the rapidity of its progress, those who despair of arresting its motion endeavor to obstruct it by difficulties and impediments; they vainly seek to counteract its effect by contrary efforts; but it gradually reduces or destroys every obstacle, until by its incessant activity the bulwarks of the influence of wealth are ground down to the fine and shifting sand which is the basis of democracy.

When the law of inheritance permits, still more when it decrees, the equal division of a father’s property amongst all his children, its effects are of two kinds: it is important to distinguish them from each other, although they tend to the same end.

In virtue of the law of partible inheritance, the death of every proprietor brings about a kind of revolution in property; not only do his possessions change hands, but their very nature is altered, since they are parcelled into shares, which become smaller and smaller at each division. This is the direct and, as it were, the physical effect of the law. It follows, then, that in countries where equality of inheritance is established by law, property, and especially landed property, must have a tendency to perpetual diminution. The effects, however, of such legislation would only be perceptible after a lapse of time, if the law was abandoned to its own working; for supposing the family to consist of two children (and in a country people as France is the average number is not above three), these children, sharing amongst them the fortune of both parents, would not be poorer than their father or mother.

Test-Taking

Insight

Tricks of the Trade

While the IQ type SAT is full of tricks and illusions, the knowledge-based ACT is pretty straightforward. However there are a few techniques you should master.

Levels of difficulty: There are different types of questions — easy ones, hard ones, long ones, short ones. Feel free to skip around, but be sure and coordinate your answer sheet with the questions.

Identify deal makers: A little bell should ring in your mind when you read words like “but,” “although,” “in spite of,” “however,” and “nonetheless.” It means a deal is being made, a change is occurring. Don’t be left at the station when the train leaves and goes in another direction!

Clock watching: Watch the clock. Pace yourself. Write in the test book. For example, you have 45 minutes to answer 45 questions. The test begins at 11:00 A.M. At the first item write “11:00.” Now, move to the end, to question 45, and write “11:35.” Next to question 23 write “11:18.” Your goal is to attain these benchmarks. This leaves you ten minutes to check your answers. Remember: scores in the high 20s and low 30s inevitably emerge from thorough proofreading.

What you see is what you get: Don’t be fancy. Answer the question. Don’t look for trickery or intrigue. If it seems easy, well, maybe it is. This test-taking strategy is much different from the SAT, which is full of subtleties that don’t exist in the ACT.

EADING

Idea Stated

In America, not only do municipal bodies exist, but they are kept alive and supported by public spirit. The township of New England possesses two advantages which infallibly secure the attentive interest of mankind, namely, independence and authority. Its sphere is indeed small and limited, but within that sphere its action is unrestrained; and its independence gives to it a real importance which its extent and population may not always ensure.

It is to be remembered that the affections of men generally lie on the side of authority. Patriotism is not durable in a conquered nation. The New Englander is attached to his township, not only because he was born in it, but because it constitutes a social body of which he is a member, and whose government claims and deserves the exercise of his sagacity. In Europe the absence of local public spirit is a frequent subject of regret to those who are in power; everyone agrees that there is no surer guarantee of order and tranquility, and yet nothing is more difficult to create. If the municipal bodies were made powerful and independent, the authorities of the nation might be disunited and the peace of the country endangered. Yet, without power and independence, a town may contain good subjects, but it can have no active citizens. Another important fact is that the township of New England is so constituted as to excite the warmest of human affections, without arousing the ambitious passions of the heart of man. The officers of the country are not elected, and their authority is very limited. Even the State is only a second-rate community, whose tranquil and obscure administration offers no inducement sufficient to draw men away from the circle of their interests into the turmoil of public affairs. The federal government confers power and honor on the men who conduct it; but these individuals can never be very numerous. The high station of the Presidency can only be reached at an advanced period of life, and the other federal functionaries are generally men who have been favored by fortune, or distinguished in some other career. Such cannot be the permanent aim of the ambitious. But the township serves as a centre for the desire of public esteem, the want of exciting interests, and the taste for authority and popularity, in the midst of the ordinary relations of life; and the passions which commonly embroil society change their character when they find a vent so near the domestic hearth and the family circle.4

An appropriate thesis for this passage would be:

The American president is mostly ineffectual.
Democracy, at least in the local setting, is a delusion.
Most Americans are loyal to their local setting rather than the federal setting.
Americans are great patriots.

RITING

Evaluating Essays

Score the following unpublished, student-produced ACT essay and then discuss how it could be improved.

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

Traditionally the term “heroism” has been applied to those who have braved physical danger to defend a cause or to protect others. But one of the most feared dangers people face is that of disapproval by their family, peers, or community. Sometimes acting courageously requires someone to speak out at the risk of such rejection. We should consider those who do so true heroes. Should heroes be defined as people who say what they think when we ourselves lack the courage to say it?

Heroes are not only people who perform physically dangerous deeds on behalf of others. Many heroes are simply people who stand up and defend what they believe through their actions and words no matter what the consequence. Sometimes those consequences are danger, and sometimes the consequences are rejection. People like Mother Teresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are examples of such heroes.

Mother Teresa is known all over the world for her acts of charity. However, had she not stood up for what she believed in, she would have never had an opportunity to serve the poor. Throughout her time in India, Mother Teresa faced rejection and hardships. Her bishop and the pope told her she could not leave her convent to work in the slums and rejected both her and her proposals multiple times. The Indian government tore down her work on more than one occasion. Sometimes she was threatened by angry Hindus because they thought that she wanted to convert Hindus to Christianity. Often they would not even allow her to defend her position. Yet in every situation she faced, Mother Teresa stood up for what she believed to be right. She didn’t receive much recognition until the end of her life, but she was truly a hero for the poorest of the poor all over the world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another such hero. Bonhoeffer was a pastor in his native Germany. In the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler was gaining power in Germany, Bonhoeffer sensed trouble brewing and went to England and then the United States. He returned to Germany just before the borders were closed because he felt that he needed to stand up for what he believed was right. Bonhoeffer worked against Hitler’s Third Reich. He was rejected by many of his fellow countrymen and his church members. He was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler and was put in a concentration camp. Bonhoeffer stood firm in his convictions. He was hanged at the camp in April 1945, shortly before Germany surrendered.

People like Mother Teresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are heroes because they were willing to stand upon their personal convictions. That bravery is what truly makes a hero.

ATH

Algebra

5x2 –12 = 33
3x2 + 4 = 16
4x2 + ll = 136 – x2
5(3x2 – 1) = 11(x2 + 1)
2/5x2 – 1/3x2 = 4/15

NGLISH

Grammar: Adverb Placement, Part 1

In the following citations, see if the adverbs can be placed before or after the infinitive and still modify it as clearly as they now do:6

“There are, then, many things to be carefully considered, if a strike is to succeed.” — Laughlin
“That the mind may not have to go backwards and forwards in order to rightly connect them.” — Herbert Spencer
“It may be easier to bear along all the qualifications of an idea . . . than to first imperfectly conceive such idea.” — Id
“In works of art, this kind of grandeur, which consists in multitude, is to be very cautiously admitted.” — Burke
“That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarcely worth the sentinel.” — Goldsmith

CIENCE

Drawing Conclusions

Scientists typically examine data and draw conclusions from that data. Examine the following map and information and evaluate the veracity of the proposed conclusions. Remember: these conclusions are merely inferences (or not) that you have to evaluate.7

Which conclusions are defensible by the data on the map?

The modern colonial movements which have been genuine race expansions have shown a tendency not only to adhere to their zone, but to follow parallels of latitude or isotherms. The stratification of European peoples in the Americas, excepting Spanish and Portuguese, coincides with heat zones.
The movement of Europeans into the tropical regions of Asia, Australasia, Africa, and America, like the American advance into the Philippines, represents commercial and political, not genuine ethnic expansion.
The rapid inland advance from the coast of oversea colonists is part of that restless activity which is fostered by contact with the sea and supported by the command of abundant resources conferred by maritime superiority. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, as later the English colonization of America, seized the rim of the land, and promptly pushed up the rivers in sea-going boats far into the interior. But periphery may give to central region something more than conquerors and colonists. From its active markets and cosmopolitan exchanges there steadily filter into the interior culture and commodities, carried by peaceful merchant and missionary, who, however, are often only the harbingers of the conqueror. The accessibility of the periphery tends to raise it in culture, wealth, density of population, and often in political importance, far in advance of the center.
People of color naturally prefer the temperate climates.

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