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AP English Language: Mixed Skills II (Drill 1)

Drill 1 · Reading · Mixed Skills II

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About This Drill

AP English Language: Mixed Skills II (Drill 1) is a Reading practice drill covering Mixed Skills II. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Mixed Skills II drills feature more challenging passages, historical documents, speeches, and complex arguments, as found in the harder sets of the AP English Language and Composition Exam. Read carefully and attend to both argument and style.

Passage

The following text is adapted from W.E.B. Du Bois's essay "The Talented Tenth," published in 1903. The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth of the race who may guide the mass away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of training, we shall make artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools, intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it; this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. If this is true, and who can deny it?, three tasks lie before me; first, to show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; second, to show how these men may be educated and trained; and, third, to show their relation to the great problem of Negro advancement. How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few strengthened? There was a time when the world reckoned the higher education of the Negro a problem of doubtful expediency. We call up for review the record of this group of men and we ask: What did they do? What has been the result of their leadership? They went into a by-gone age and dragged the best of that past into the sunlight of the present. They found the way into the wilderness of education and lighted the path. They have, in the main, made manhood the measure of man, rather than money. The opposition to higher education of the Negro rested not upon any distrust of the schools but upon an economic desire to use Negro labor in such a way that the community could profit most. The argument ran: if the Negro is trained in industrial and technical schools to be a more efficient laborer, this training will benefit both the Negro and the community. This argument has a certain force and a certain truth. But it is not the whole truth. The danger of this argument is that it mistakes the means for the end. A laborer trained without higher intelligence is not a free man. He is a tool, useful, perhaps efficient, but without the capacity for self-direction that makes freedom possible. Du Bois concludes: "The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men."

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. Du Bois's central argument in the essay is best summarized as

  • A) industrial and technical training is the most reliable path to economic advancement for African Americans.
  • B) the educated class has an obligation to return to their communities and provide direct economic assistance.
  • C) the American education system must be reformed to eliminate racial discrimination before Black students can succeed according to this view.
  • D) the education of a talented intellectual and moral leadership class is essential to the advancement of the race as a whole. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is correct. Du Bois argues that the 'Talented Tenth', an educated leadership class, must be trained not merely as skilled laborers but as men of broad intelligence and moral vision, and that this group will guide the wider community. Choice A represents the position Du Bois is arguing against, the industrial training model. Choice B introduces direct economic assistance, which Du Bois does not argue for. Choice C introduces institutional reform of the American education system, which is not Du Bois's primary argument.

Question 2. The series of conditional statements in the first paragraph, 'if we make money the object...if we make technical skill the object', primarily functions to

  • A) concede that money and technical skill are legitimate educational goals that Du Bois ultimately endorses.
  • B) establish through parallel structure that reducing education to economic or vocational ends produces something less than fully realized human beings. ✓
  • C) introduce a counterargument from industrial educators that Du Bois will spend the remainder of the essay refuting.
  • D) suggest that the Negro community's primary educational challenge is fundamentally financial rather than philosophical.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The parallel conditional structure, if money, then money-makers (not men); if technical skill, then artisans (not men), builds a logical progression showing that education aimed at narrow economic ends falls short of what Du Bois considers the true object of schooling: the development of full human beings. Choice A inverts his position; these are the approaches he is arguing against. Choice C misidentifies the structure as counterargument; Du Bois is not presenting these as views he will later rebut but as inadequate alternatives he dismisses in this paragraph. Choice D misreads the logic; Du Bois is making a philosophical argument, not an economic diagnosis.

Question 3. The phrase 'dragged the best of that past into the sunlight of the present' in the third paragraph is best understood as

  • A) a metaphor celebrating the Talented Tenth's work of recovering and applying the most valuable intellectual and moral traditions of earlier generations. ✓
  • B) a literal description of the archival research conducted by Black educators in the post-Reconstruction era.
  • C) an ironic acknowledgment that the very past Du Bois celebrates was itself deeply marked by racial oppression.
  • D) an allusion to Plato's allegory of the cave, suggesting that most people remain trapped in ignorance.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. The phrase uses the concrete image of dragging something from darkness into light as a metaphor for the intellectual labor of the Talented Tenth, bringing forward the best of what prior generations produced for use in the present. Choice B misreads it as literal description; it is figurative. Choice C imports an ironic reading not supported by Du Bois's tone, which is celebratory in this passage. Choice D may find a structural parallel to Plato, but there is no evidence Du Bois is making a direct allusion, and the question asks for how the phrase is best understood in context.

Question 4. Du Bois's acknowledgment in the fourth paragraph that the industrial training argument 'has a certain force and a certain truth' primarily serves to

  • A) signal that he is willing to abandon his argument for higher education in favor of a compromise position.
  • B) introduce evidence from industrial schools that contradicts his earlier claims about the Talented Tenth.
  • C) strengthen his credibility by demonstrating intellectual honesty before identifying the argument's fundamental flaw. ✓
  • D) suggest that industrial training and higher education are equally valid paths for different segments of the community.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. By granting that the industrial training argument has genuine force before identifying its error; 'it mistakes the means for the end'; Du Bois shows that he is engaging with the strongest version of the opposing view, not a strawman. This concession makes his subsequent critique more persuasive. Choice A overstates the concession; Du Bois does not abandon his position. Choice B is not supported; no contradictory evidence is introduced. Choice D misreads the paragraph's direction; Du Bois identifies a fundamental distinction between the two paths, not equivalence.

Question 5. Du Bois's characterization of a laborer 'trained without higher intelligence' as 'a tool' is best understood as

  • A) an appeal to pathos designed to generate emotional outrage at the conditions of Black laborers in the South.
  • B) a rhetorical reduction that equates purely vocational training with a denial of the full humanity and self-direction that freedom requires. ✓
  • C) a concession that industrial training has produced workers who are highly efficient but personally unfulfilled.
  • D) a direct attack on Booker T. Washington, whose industrial training program Du Bois believed dehumanized its students.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The word 'tool', useful, efficient, but without self-direction, compresses Du Bois's philosophical argument: education that trains only for labor produces persons who can be used but cannot direct their own lives. Freedom, in Du Bois's argument, requires the capacity for self-direction that only higher intelligence can provide. Choice A mischaracterizes the register; the passage is analytical, not primarily emotional. Choice C introduces personal fulfillment, which is not Du Bois's framing. Choice D may reflect historical context, but the passage itself does not name Washington, and the question asks about the rhetorical function within the text.