Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT127 S4 P4 Q26 Explanation

French Egalitarian Education Reforms

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsInferenceSociety

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Passage

During most of the nineteenth century, many French women continued to be educated according to models long established by custom and religious tradition. One recent observer has termed the failure to institute real and lasting educational reform at the end of the eighteenth century a "missed opportunity"—for in spite of the egalitarian in particular attempted to institute educational systems for women that were, to a great extent, egalitarian.

The first of these proposals endeavored to replace the predominantly religious education that women originally received in convents and at home with reformed curricula. More importantly, the proposal insisted that, because education was a common good that should be offered to both sexes, instruction should be available to everyone. By the same continued to define women in terms of their roles in the domestic sphere and as mothers.

That neither proposal was able to envision a system of education that was fully equal for women, and that neither was adopted into law even as such, bespeaks the immensity of the cultural and political obstacles to egalitarian education for women at the time. Nevertheless, the vision of egalitarian educational reform was origin, as doing so allowed them to appropriate the legitimacy conferred by tradition and historical continuity.

What this question is testing

Inference

Your task

Find what must be true based on what the passage or stimulus states.

Common trap

Answers that are plausible or likely but not actually guaranteed by the text.

Winning move

Keep only the choice the statements fully support — eliminate anything that requires an extra assumption.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
26.

Based on the passage, the fact that the proposed reforms were introduced shortly after the French Revolution most clearly

Answer choices

  1. Opposite3% picked this

    were a reaction to the excesses of the

    They were in line with the Revolution, which was in reaction to the former government.

  2. No Support4% picked this

    had their roots in a belief in the power

    No Support: "rooted in power of ed belief" There's nothing we can point to at the end of the first paragraph that makes it seem like "shortly after Revolution = based in the power of education"

  3. Opposite2% picked this

    had vast popular support within French

    We learn later that these proposals were not passed due to the headwinds of cultural and political obstacles. So even though these proposals were in keeping with the spirit of the Revolution, we don't have textual support for vast popular support and we even have what seems to be counterevidence to that idea.

  4. Opposite4% picked this

    treated education for women as a prerequisite to the implementation of

    Since these proposals weren't passed, it would be surprising to characterize them as the "first thing that needs to be done, before we implement any other reforms". The passage is giving off the opposite gist, that after the Revolution when other things were being reformed it seems like a missed opportunity that education was not reformed.

  5. Correct87% picked this

    were influenced by egalitarian

    Why this is right

    Yes, this not only reinforces what it says in the same sentence, that these "two in particular were, to a great extent, egalitarian", but it also reinforces the connection to the previous sentence. The fact that these proposals came right after the Revolution shows, the author argues, that the post-Revolutionary spirit of egalitarianism and secularism did try to have an effect on education.

    Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

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