Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer for each question.
To teach is to create a space in which obedience to truth is practiced. Space may sound a vague, poetic metaphor until we realize that it describes experiences of everyday life. We know what it means to be in a green and open field; we know what it means to be on a crowded rush hour bus. These experiences of physical space have parallels in our relations with others. On our jobs we know what it is to be pressed and crowded, our working space diminished by the urgency of deadlines and competitiveness of colleagues. But then there are times when deadlines disappear and colleagues cooperate, when everyone has a space to move, invent and produce with energy and enthusiasm. With family and friends, we know how it feels to have unreasonable demands placed upon us, to be boxed in by the expectations of those nearest to us. But then there are times when we feel accepted for who we are (or forgiven for who we are not), times when a spouse or a child or a friend gives us the space, both to be and to become. Similar experiences of crowding and space are found in education. To sit in a class where the teacher stuffs our minds with information, organizes it with finality, insists on having the answers while being utterly uninterested in our views, and focus us into a grim competition for grades – to sit in such a class is to experience a lack of space for learning. But to study with a teacher, who not only speaks but also listens, who not only answers but asks questions and welcomes our insights, who provides information and theories that do not close doors but open new ones, who encourages students to help each other learn – to study with such a teacher is to know the power of a learning space.
A learning space has three essential dimensions: openness, boundaries and an air of hospitality. To create open learning space is to remove the impediments to learning that we find around and within us; we often create them ourselves to evade the challenge of truth and transformation. One source of such impediments is our fear of appearing ignorant to others or to ourselves. The oneness of a space is created by the
firmness of its boundaries. A learning space cannot extend indefinitely; if it did, it would not be a structure for learning but an invitation for confusion and chaos. When space boundaries are violated, the quality of space suffers. The teacher who wants to create an open learning space must define and defend its boundaries with care. Because the pursuit of truth can be painful and discomforting, the learning space must be
hospitable. Hospitable means receiving each other, our struggles, our new-born ideas with openness and care. It means creating an ethos in which the community of truth can form and the pain of its transformation be borne. A learning space needs to be hospitable not to make learning painless, but to make painful things possible, things without which no learning can occur, things like exposing ignorance, testing tentative hypotheses, challenging false or partial information, and mutual criticism of thought.
The task of creating learning space with qualities of openness, boundaries and hospitality can be approached at several levels. The most basic level is the physical arrangement of the classroom, Consider the traditional classroom setting with row of chairs facing the lectern where learning space is confined to the narrow alley of attention between each student and teacher. In this space, there is no community of truth, hospitality of room for students to relate to the thoughts of each other. Contrast it with the chairs placed in a circular arrangement creating an open space within which learners can interconnect. At another level, the teacher can create conceptual space-space with words in two ways. One is through assigned reading; the other is through lecturing, assigned reading, not in the form of speed reading several hundred pages but contemplative
reading which opens, not fills, our learning space. A teacher can also create a learning space by means of lectures. By providing critical information and a framework of interpretation, a lecturer can lay down boundaries within which learning occurs.
We also create learning space through the kind of speech we utter and the silence from which true speech emanates. Speech is a precious gift and a vital tool, but too often our speaking is an evasion of truth, a way of buttressing our self-serving reconstructions of reality. Silence must therefore be an integral part of learning space. In silence, more than in arguments, our mind made world falls away and we are open to the truth that seeks us. Words often divide us, but silence can unite. Finally teachers must also create emotional space in the class-room, space that allows feelings to arise and be dealt with because submerged feelings can undermine learning. In an emotionally honest learning space, one created by a teacher who does not fear dealing with feelings, the community of truth can flourish between us and we can flourish in it.
The best remedy for shortage lies in
Show Hint
- putting up more pumps in rural areas.
- cleaning up polluted water.
- reducing the waste level of 25-30 percent of the total flow of water.
- constructing large sized dams.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
but improving the usability of existing sources by cleaning up polluted water.
Polluted rivers, lakes, and groundwater cannot be consumed without treatment,
and with a significant portion of India's water bodies being contaminated,
restoring these to usable condition is the quickest and most sustainable solution.
Option (a) only extracts more water, not addresses usability.
Option (c) is important but doesn't recover already polluted sources.
Option (d) involves long timelines and massive ecological consequences.
Hence, option (b) is the most practical and immediate remedy.
The task of creating learning space with qualities of openness, boundaries and hospitality is multidimensional. It involves operating at
Show Hint
- psychological and conceptual levels.
- physical, perceptual and behavioral levels.
- physical, conceptual and emotional levels.
- conceptual, verbal and sensitive levels.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The physical level refers to the layout, accessibility, and design of the learning space.
The conceptual level involves the ideas, pedagogy, and structure of the learning approach.
The emotional level ensures psychological safety, warmth, and openness, fostering true hospitality.
Only option (c) acknowledges this comprehensive and multidimensional approach.
Option (a) misses the tangible and affective dimensions.
Option (b) does not fully capture the abstract (conceptual) or affective (emotional) components.
Option (d) is too limited in scope and less precise.
The statement ‘the openness of a space is created by the firmness of its boundaries’ appears contradictory. Which of the following statements provides the best justification for the proposition?
Show Hint
- We cannot have a space without boundaries.
- Bounded space is highly structured.
- When space boundaries are violated, the quality of space suffers.
- A teacher can effectively defend a learning space without boundaries.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
but in practice, it reflects a deeper truth about structure and freedom.
Well-defined boundaries provide a safe, predictable environment where expression can thrive.
When these are violated, chaos or intrusion can occur, disrupting the space’s purpose.
Thus, the integrity of a space relies on its limits to preserve quality and inclusivity.
Option (c) best explains this balance between structure (boundaries) and expression (openness).
According to the author, learning is a painful process because
Show Hint
- it exposes our ignorance.
- our views and hypotheses are challenged.
- it involves criticizing the views of other.
- All of the above reasons.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
It forces us to confront our ignorance (a), question what we previously believed (b),
and occasionally enter into critique and disagreement with others’ views (c).
This internal and external friction makes learning a painful but necessary process for growth.
Option (d) captures the full emotional and intellectual challenge that learning entails.
Understanding the notion of space in our relations with other is
Show Hint
- to acknowledge the beauty of a poetic metaphor.
- exclusively rooted in our experiences of physical space.
- to accept a spiritual dimension in our dealings with our peers.
- to extend the parallel of physical space to our experiences in daily life.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
but as a way to understand how boundaries, openness, and interaction work in human relationships.
By paralleling physical space with emotional or conceptual space,
we can reflect on how we create respectful, inclusive, and meaningful interactions.
Option (d) best expresses this extension from the physical to the experiential.
Which of the following statements best describes the author’s conception of learning space?
Show Hint
- Where the teacher is friendly.
- Where there is no grim competition for grades.
- Where the students are encouraged to learn about space.
- Where the teacher provides information and theories which open new doors and encourages students to help each other learn.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
It is not merely about teacher friendliness or lack of competition,
but about nurturing intellectual growth through openness, guidance, and shared inquiry.
The teacher's role is to offer frameworks and ideas that stimulate curiosity,
while also fostering a supportive space where students collaborate and learn from one another.
Option (d) captures the depth and multidimensional quality of this space.
According to the author, silence must be an integral part of learning space because
Show Hint
- silence helps to unite us with others to create a community of truth.
- silent contemplation prepares us to construct our mind–made world.
- speaking is too often an exercise in the evasion of truth.
- speaking is too often a way of buttressing our self–serving reconstruction of reality.
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
but as a shared contemplative state that enables deeper connection and reflection.
In silence, learners can engage more honestly with themselves and with each other.
This unity through quiet introspection fosters a communal search for truth,
where words are used more responsibly and insightfully when spoken.
Option (a) captures the unifying and purposeful role of silence in building a learning community.
Another way of describing the author’s notion of learning space can be summarized in the following manner
Show Hint
- It is vital that learning be accompanied by unlearning.
- Learning encompasses such elements as courage, dignity and endeavour.
- An effective teacher recognizes the value of empathy.
- Encourage good learners, discourage indifferent ones.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
but emotional awareness and mutual understanding.
Empathy becomes central to this view—students and teachers must relate to one another’s feelings and struggles.
An empathetic teacher nurtures openness, supports vulnerability, and sustains genuine inquiry.
Option (c) best reflects this humanistic and emotionally honest learning environment.
According to the author, an effective teacher does not allow
Show Hint
- feelings to arise within the learning space.
- silence to become an integral part of the learning space.
- learning space to be filled by speed reading of several hundred pages of assigned reading.
- violation of learning space boundaries.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
An effective teacher prioritizes reflective learning, dialogue, and emotional presence
rather than cramming large volumes of text without understanding.
Option (c) highlights the author's concern about mechanized education lacking meaningful engagement.
An emotionally honest learning space can only be created by
Show Hint
- a teacher committed to joining the community of truth.
- a teacher who is not afraid of confronting feelings.
- a teacher who takes care not to undermine the learning process.
- a teacher who worships critical silence.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
A teacher must be willing to engage with the emotional aspects of learning—
to recognize discomfort, fear, confusion, and help students work through them with courage and empathy.
Option (b) best represents the courage and sensitivity needed to build such a space.
Conceptual space with words can be created by
Show Hint
- assigned reading and lecturing.
- speed reading and written comprehension.
- gentle persuasion and deliberate action.
- creative extrapolation and illustrations.
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Assigned reading introduces foundational ideas, while lecturing helps in building organized understanding.
These methods are traditional yet effective in constructing the initial framework for concepts using language.
Option (a) emphasizes this disciplined approach to shaping thought and expression.
Options (b), (c), and (d) may support learning but don’t define the deliberate and structured nature
of creating conceptual clarity that the question highlights.
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
- Shown below are letters ‘e’ taken from four popular logos, arranged in a sequence. Which of the options is the correct sequence?
- UCEED - 2026
- English Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Shown below are four options, each showing consecutive frames representing the movement of a pendulum of an old-style wall clock for an animation movie. Which is the correct option?
- UCEED - 2026
- English Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Acrucial moderating factor in how people experience comparisons is self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to interpret upward comparison as informative rather than threatening. They are more resilient in the face of others’ success and more likely to believe they can reach their own goals. In contrast, people with low self-esteem are more prone to interpret comparison as judgment, reinforcing negative self-views and triggering feelings of inadequacy.
This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing loop. People with high self-esteem are less vulnerable to upward comparison, which intensifies those doubts. Those with a secure sense of self are more likely to use comparison as a learning tool. The same external stimulus—a colleague’s achievements, a friend’s popularity—can have radically different effects depending on internal stability.
Self-esteem also influences how people choose their comparison targets. Research has found that individuals often engage in “selective comparison,” seeking out those who confirm their existing beliefs about themselves. This can become a subtle form of self-sabotage. Someone who feels unworthy may subconsciously seek out targets that reinforce that sense, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority. One of the most promising antidotes to social comparison is temporal comparison—evaluating oneself not against others, but against one’s own past. This method has been shown to increase motivation and satisfaction, especially when individuals can see concrete progress. Temporal comparison activates the same reward circuits as social comparison but avoids the threat systems associated with social ranking. It also reinforces agency: individuals focus on what they can control and improve rather than what others control. In therapeutic and coaching settings, temporal comparison is used to help clients build self-efficacy and track growth over time.
Moreover, people who focus on self-improvement rather than social dominance are less likely to fall into cycles of envy or self-pity. They can still use others as inspiration, but they do so without attaching their self-worth to the outcome. This is not to say they never compare—but that they focus on learning, rather than judgment. The most skilful approach to comparison may lie in eliminating it, but in reframing it as feedback. When we interpret comparison as information rather than a verdict, we can ask, “What can I learn from this?” This shift turns comparison into a growth tool. Teachers mentor their students, not as rivals. Psychologists emphasize that the key variable here is mindset.
A fixed mindset sees comparison as a threat. If someone else is better, it means we are worse. A growth mindset sees comparison as a map. If someone else has reached a certain level, it means the path exists. This reframing is not just a cognitive trick. It changes the emotional tone of comparison, making it more likely to inspire than to wound. Reframing also requires emotional regulation—the ability to notice an initial pang of envy or shame without reacting impulsively. With practice, individuals can learn to pause, reflect, and reinterpret their emotional responses. Over time, this builds resilience and self-trust, allowing comparison to become a learning tool rather than a cage.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need the flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while demphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experiences. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUITmetaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humanity such a burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might hide from the problems and the generals. To the contrary, there was a high insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coart forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, but always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”
...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Questions Asked in CAT exam
- The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
In the dynamic realm of creativity, artists often find themselves at the crossroads between drawing inspiration from diverse cultures and inadvertently crossing into the territory of cultural appropriation. Inspiration is the lifeblood of creativity, driving artists to create works that resonate across borders. In a globalized era of the modern world, artists draw from a vast array of cultural influences. When approached respectfully, inspiration becomes a bridge, fostering understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity. However, the line between inspiration and cultural appropriation can be thin and easily blurred.
Cultural appropriation occurs when elements from a particular culture are borrowed without proper understanding, respect, or acknowledgment. This leads to the commodification of sacred symbols, the reinforcement of stereotypes, and the erasure of the cultural context from which these elements originated. It is essential to recognize that the impact of cultural appropriation extends beyond the realm of artistic expression, influencing societal perceptions and perpetuating power imbalances.- CAT - 2025
- Para Summary
- The number of distinct integers $n$ for which $\log_{\left(\frac14\right)}(n^2 - 7n + 11)>0$ is:
- CAT - 2025
- Linear Inequalities
- In the set of consecutive odd numbers $\{1, 3, 5, \ldots, 57\}$, there is a number $k$ such that the sum of all the elements less than $k$ is equal to the sum of all the elements greater than $k$. Then, $k$ equals?
- CAT - 2025
- Number Systems
- The number of distinct pairs of integers $(x, y)$ satisfying the inequalities $x>y \ge 3$ and $x + y<14$ is:
- CAT - 2025
- Number Systems
For any natural number $k$, let $a_k = 3^k$. The smallest natural number $m$ for which \[ (a_1)^1 \times (a_2)^2 \times \dots \times (a_{20})^{20} \;<\; a_{21} \times a_{22} \times \dots \times a_{20+m} \] is:
- CAT - 2025
- Linear Inequalities