Question:
Passage:
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
According to the passage, parents do their best to discourage curiosity in their children, because they
Passage:
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
According to the passage, parents do their best to discourage curiosity in their children, because they
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
According to the passage, parents do their best to discourage curiosity in their children, because they
Show Hint
Focus on the exact word the passage uses to describe the children's questions in that sentence about parents extinguishing curiosity.
Updated On: Jul 20, 2026
- have no time
- are unable to answer all the questions
- feel that their children ask stupid questions continuously
- have no patience to answer them
- have more important tasks to attend to
Show Solution
Verified By Collegedunia
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
The passage states this directly: "Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows." The operative word is "unanswerable" - the questions are ones the parents cannot actually answer, not questions they are too busy or too impatient to deal with. That lines up exactly with option (b), "are unable to answer all the questions."
The remaining options bring in reasons the passage never mentions. (a) have no time and (e) have more important tasks to attend to both invent a time-pressure excuse that is not in the text. (d) have no patience to answer them shifts the issue from ability to temperament, which again is not what the passage says - the problem is the questions being unanswerable, not the parents' patience. (c) feel that their children ask stupid questions continuously actually misreads the tone of the passage, since the example questions given, like why fire is hot or why grass grows, are treated as genuine and difficult questions about the natural world, not as silly ones. So the only option grounded in the passage's own wording is (b).
The remaining options bring in reasons the passage never mentions. (a) have no time and (e) have more important tasks to attend to both invent a time-pressure excuse that is not in the text. (d) have no patience to answer them shifts the issue from ability to temperament, which again is not what the passage says - the problem is the questions being unanswerable, not the parents' patience. (c) feel that their children ask stupid questions continuously actually misreads the tone of the passage, since the example questions given, like why fire is hot or why grass grows, are treated as genuine and difficult questions about the natural world, not as silly ones. So the only option grounded in the passage's own wording is (b).
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Top IBSAT Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions
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Top IBSAT Passage Based Questions Questions
- Passage:
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
It may be inferred from the passage that curiosity - Passage:
Archaeology is a source of history, not just a humble auxiliary discipline. Archaeological data are historical documents in their own right, not mere illustrations to written texts. Just as much as any other historian, an archaeologist studies and tries to reconstitute the process that has created the human world in which we live and us ourselves in so far as we are each creatures of our age and social environment. Archaeological data are all changes in the material world resulting from human action, or more succinctly, the fossilized results of human behavior. The sum total of these constitutes what may be called the archaeological record. This record exhibits certain peculiarities and deficiencies, the consequences of which produce a rather superficial contrast between archaeological history and the more familiar kind based upon written records.
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The only way to learn about prehistoric societies is through the study of
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