Q26

[gplaya123]

Teachers, I need your help direly.

I chose D for this question.

While recognizing that E is the answer and is supported, I am not too sure why D is wrong.

1) The reason I thought D was correct: In line 55, it says the government had to demonstrate the new standards that are ROOTED in a long... tradition. Since such demonstration led to the evolution of educational system where kids are mandated to go school, I thought B was definitely the answer.

REVISION: HMM as I am writing this, I realize that... this question is actually about EARLIER PROPOSALS that were presented in the preceding paragraph... Also line 48 says something about egalitarian stuff so... damn it! the stuff I am mentioning is about government... I think i am right and I think I am mad at myself for doing this...

Need your verification still!

BTW:
What is A trying to say? What does it mean my excesses of government? Is it trying to say that proposal was a reaction to the government that underwent significant changes?

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you sorted things out for yourself. Nice work! On a lot of reading comp, the key part of our process is "knowing where in the passage to look".

When they ask us about "earlier proposals", we might see line 50 using that phrase to refer to everything discussed in the 2nd paragraph.

But since the question is asking us about "shortly after" the French Revolution, I would really expect the answer to come from the first paragraph, where we discussed the French Revolution time period.

The lines you were looking at to support (B) are referring to the French government 100 years later. So your biggest cause for concern on this question is where you chose to look in the passage, based on the keywords in the question stem.

A paragraph that discusses the EVENTUAL reforms in 1880 would be a weird spot to find the answer to this question (although SOME questions definitely have a supporting line reference that isn't quite where you'd expect it).

The support for (E) is not just line 48, but lines 7 and 15.
"influenced by egalitarian ideals" is a close paraphrase of "the egalitarian aims of the French Revolution" in lines 7-8.

In terms of (A), "excesses of government" would normally refer to a government being excessively greedy for power and/or money. I don't know my history that well, but I'm assuming the government that was OVERTHROWN in the French Revolution was probably infuriating poor people with excessive taxes and income inequality. I'd be surprised if the NEW government (i.e. the revolutionaries) was actually decadent and excessive. No matter what, there's no support for either idea in the text.

Real quick, take a sec to reflect on how you WERE proving (B) vs. how the testwriters are proving (E).

You were thinking, "if someone requires school attendance, then they probably believe in the power of education". You're making your own ideas up about what the text might also mean.

But LSAT really doesn't make use do this, the vast majority of the time. The correct answer is just a paraphrase of something that was actually said.

I'm okay going from "compulsory attendance" to "mandating that children come to school".

I'm deeply questioning going from "compulsory attendance" to "believe in the power of education".

Hope this helps!