NIMCET 2021 — ENGLISH PYQ
NIMCET | ENGLISH | 2021Read the following passage carefully
and answer the question that follow: It is said with truth that the
function of a university is to prepare the young to take their place in
human society. It must provide its members with the knowledge and
skill necessary to make them efficient citizens. But is the whole duty
of man exhausted by the acquisition of knowledge and professional
training? Is a university only an institution for higher learning, a
factory which churns out clerks and technicians able to run the
machinery of the State? Mere knowledge which gratifies curiosity is
different from culture which refines personality. Culture is not
remembering a mass of serious details about the dates of birth of the
great heroes of the world or the interesting names of the fastest ships
which cross the Atlantic or entertaining odds and ends gathered from
the latest who's who. A well known institution of this country has for
its motto sa vidya yavimuchyate: that is, knowledge which is designed
for salvation, for the development of the soul, is the best. Such an
idea is not merely an Indian idiosyncrasy. Plato said long ago that the
culture of soul is "the first and fairest thing that the best of men can
ever have. According to Goethe, the object of education is to form
tastes and not simply to communicate knowledge. A man's culture is
not judged by the amount of tabulated information which he has at
his command, but by the quality of mind which he brings to bear on
the facts of life. Education is not cramming the mind with a host of
technical details, putting sight, as it were, into blind eyes.
The eye of the soul is never blind, only its gaze may be turned to the
false and the fleeting. Too often the vision may be dragged
downwards by the "leaden weights" of pride and prejudice, of passion
and desire. The function of the teacher is not to add to the "leaden
weights" but remove them and liberate the soul from the
encumbrance so that it may follow its native impulse to soar upwards.
The student at a university does not merely learn something, but
becomes something by being exposed, in the most elastic period of
his life, to transforming influences, such as the constant clash of mind
with mind, the interchange of ideas, the testing of opinions, and the
growth of knowledge of human nature.
Mere knowledge and culture may be distinguished from each
other in that ?