HW #7

Due before class starts on Wednesday, October 30, 2013.

Name: _____________________________________________________
Period: ________

QUOTE OF THE WEEK!

“He who opens a school

door, closes a prison."

—Victor Hugo

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
SHOW UP. WORK HARD. BE NICE.

TOPICS FOR THE WEEK:

PREPOSITIONS, DIFFERING VIEWS OF

EDUCATION
Part I

Hitchhiking

When I was 21, I did something stupid. I set out to hitchhike from St. Louis all the way to New Orleans. I knew this was a
bad idea at the time, but I just had to do it.

Hitchhiking typically involves standing on the side of the road with your thumb out, waiting for a car to pick you up and
give you a ride for part of the way. As you might imagine, it is not exactly safe. You don’t know who’s going to pick you up
—he could be a killer for all you know. The only consolation you have is that the person picking you up can no more trust
you than you can trust him.

What this really means in practice is that no one actually picks you up on the side of the road. After standing outside of St.
Louis for three hours watching cars zoom by me, I came up with another plan. I walked down the road to the first truck
stop I could find (this was about four miles down the road, so I was walking for a while). There, I found an entire restaurant
full of lonely men anxious for someone to talk to. One of them would have to be so desperate for company that he would
give an awkward, gangly 21-year-old male fare to New Orleans, right?

I walked to every seat in the restaurant and asked each sitter if he would take me south. Each trucker told me the same
thing: “Absolutely not.”

Apparently, most trucking companies have rules prohibiting the drivers from picking up passengers, probably because it is
so unsafe. Downtrodden, I left the restaurant and wandered back to the road. I stuck my thumb out again. Finally, a car
stopped. I was excited—this was it. To my dismay, though, it was the sheriff. He did offer me a ride—to the county jail.
Apparently, hitchhiking was illegal in that county. And my hitchhiking career was over before it started.

So why did I want to do it? Well, Jack Kerouac made it appear so romantic and easy in On the Road. (I suppose if I’d
been enamored of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I would’ve tried taking a boat down the Mississippi instead.) But
that book was written in a different America, one where a man could trust his fellow man, and one where travel was seen
as leisurely. The America of On the Road is nonexistent. If I hadn’t been a naïve 21-year-old, I would’ve realized that. I
would’ve at least read Kerouac’s Big Sur, in which Kerouac, now twenty years older, tries to hitchhike again and finds it
nearly as impossible as I did.

1) The second paragraph primarily serves to

A. define a term
B. set a scene
C. describe the narrator
D. reveal the narrator’s doubts
E. provide an explanation for an event

2) The narrator’s question at the end of paragraph 3 is meant to imply that the narrator

A. thought highly of himself when he was 21

B. is still hurt by the rejections he experienced in the truck stop
C. truly believes someone should’ve offered him a ride
D. realizes how foolish it was to think that he would get a ride
E. believes he would’ve gotten a ride if he hadn’t been so awkward

3) According to the narrator, which of the following statements best explains why he was not given a ride by any of the
truckers?

A. He was too naïve to understand how the world works.

B. No one could be sure that he or the drivers weren’t violent.
C. It would’ve been against trucking company rules.
D. It was illegal in that part of the country.
E. America had changed since the novel On the Road was published.
4) The passage as a whole makes it clear that the narrator, when he was 21, was

A. ambitious and unruly

B. naïve and romantic
C. foolish and pessimistic
D. friendly and outgoing
E. lonely and idealistic

5) As used in paragraph 6, the word enamored most nearly means

A. interested in
B. scared of
C. adventurous
D. optimistic about
E. passionate about

6) Imagine you were stranded beside the road without any money. What would you do? Would you try hitchhiking? Do
you feel you would encounter the same obstacles as the narrator? Why or why not?

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________
Part II: Prepositions!

Complete the exercise with the correct prepositions.

1. Henry Ford was born _________ the 30th _________ July 1863.

2. He made his first car, the Quadricycle, _________ June 1896.

3. _________ 1903, he founded the Ford Motor Company.

4. Modern mass production _________ cars was developed _________ him _________ 1913.

5. Ford's Model T could then be assembled _________ just 93 minutes.

6. _________ 1927, 15 million Model T cars had been manufactured _________ the Ford Motor Company.

7. Henry Ford became one _________ the richest and best-known people _________ the world.

Add prepositional phrases to the following sentences, making them more detailed.

1. ____________________________________, I usually go to the store.

2. The two girls went for a bike ride ____________________________________.

3. Running is good ____________________________________.

4. If you don't like scary movies, you should not go ____________________________________.

5. Going to school ____________________________________ is the best.

Read the following passage. Underline each prepositional phrase. Circle each preposition.

For most of American history, parents could expect that their children would, on
average, be much better educated than they were. But that is no longer true. This
development has serious consequences for the economy.

The epochal achievements of American economic growth have gone hand in hand with
rising educational attainment, as the economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F.
Katz have shown. From 1891 to 2007, real economic output per person grew at an
average rate of 2 percent per year — enough to double every 35 years. The average
American was twice as well off in 2007 as in 1972, four times as well off as in 1937, and
eight times as well off as in 1902. It’s no coincidence that for eight decades, from 1890
to 1970, educational attainment grew swiftly. But since 1990, that improvement has
slowed to a crawl.