Experience is the Source of Knowledge

In this life whatever learn is useful for us but whatever we experience gives us the steps to climb the great heights of life. The more the tougher is the experience, the more enhanced is the life. Albert Einstein says, "The only source of knowledge is experience." Whatever mistakes we commit and then correct shapes our experience in the light of which a new mind-set is prepared and new experience comes forth. What we need is to be brave and to take risks because nothing is the replacement of experience. There is pleasure in experiencing new things. Whatever is experienced cannot give the same pleasure as of first time.

Experience
Pleasure
Life
Knowledge

Exams Are Always Burdensome For Kids

Kids are like flowers which fade away in even a little trouble cause by any problem. The feverish days for kids come when the exams start, Their tiny brains are overburdened with huge and unbearable school work and homework. During these feverish days, one the one hand their teachers are angry with their incomplete home assignments, failing the classroom tests and not attempting all the questions in question papers of First Term Exam and on the other hand, their parents' bullying attitude towards them to memorize what is beyond their learning. They all the beauties and enjoyment of free life in these days.
Examinations
Kids
Learning
Education
Teaching
Parenting

Lesson No. 5 - On Destroying Books (Original Text)

ON DESTROYING BOOKS

J. C. Squire

It says in the paper that over two million volumes have been presented to the troops by the public. It would be interesting to inspect them. Most of them, no doubt, are quite ordinary and suitable' but it was publicly stated the such as magazines twenty years old, guides to the Lake District, and back numbers of Whitaker's Almanac. In some cases one imagines such indigestible get into the parcels by accident; but it is likely that there are those who jump at the opportunity of getting rid of books they don t want. Why have they kept them if they don't want them? But most people especially non-bookish people are very reluctant to throw away anything that looks like a book. In the most illiterate houses that one knows every worthless volume that is bought finds its way to a shelf and stays there. In reality it is not merely absurd to keep rubbish merely because it is printed: it is positively a public duty to destroy it. Destruction not merely makes more room for new books but saves one's heirs the trouble of sorting out the rubbish or storing it.

But it is not always easy to destroy books. They may not have as many lives as a cat but they certainly die hard: and it is sometimes difficult to find a scaffold for them. This difficulty once brought me almost within, the shadow of the Rope. l was living in a small and (as Shakespeare would say) heaven-kissing flat in Chelsea, and books of inferior, minor verse gradually accumulated there until at last I was faced with alternative of either evicting the books or else leaving them in sole, undisturbed tenancy and taking rooms elsewhere for myself. Now no one would have bought these books. I therefore had to throw them away or wipe them off the map altogether. But how? There were scores of them. l had no kitchen range, and I could not toast them on the gas-cooker or consume them leaf by leaf in my small study fire for it is almost as hopeless to try to bum a book without opening it as to try to burn a piece of granite. So in the end l determined to do to them what so many people do to the kittens: tie them up and consign them to the river. I improvised a sack, stuffed the books into it, put it over my shoulder, and went down the stairs into the darkness.

It was nearly midnight as I stepped into the street. There was a cold nip in the air, the sky was full of stars: and the greenish-yellow lamps threw long gleams across the smooth, hard road. Few people were about, and here and there rang out the steps of solitary travelers on the way home across the bridge to Battersea. I turned up my overcoat collar, settled my sack comfortably across my shoulders, and strode off towards the little square glow of the coffee-stall which marked the near end of the bridge, whose sweeping iron girders were just visible against the dark sky behind. A few doors down I passed a policeman who was flashing his lantern on the catches of basement windows. I fancied he looked suspicious, and I trembled slightly. The thought occurred to me: Perhaps he suspects I have swag in this sack." I was not seriously disturbed as knew that that I could bear investigation, and that nobody would be suspected of having stolen such goods (though they were all first editions) as I was carrying. Nevertheless I could not help the slight unease which comes to all who are eyed suspiciously by the police, and to all who are detected in any deliberately furtive act; however harmless. He acquitted me, apparently; and with a step that, making an effort, I prevented from growing more rapid, I walked on until I reached the Embankment.

It was then that all the implications of my act revealed themselves. I leaned against the parapet and looked down into the faintly luminous swirls of the river. Suddenly I heard a step near me; quite automatically I sprang back from the wall, and began walking on with. I fervently hoped, an air of rumination and unconcern. The pedestrian came by me without looking at me. It was a tramp who had other things to think about; and,' calling myself an ass, I stopped again. "Now for it," I thought; but just as I was preparing to "cast my books, upon the water I heard another step - a slow and measured one. The next thought came like a blaze of terrible blue lightening across my brain: "What about the splash?" A man leaning at midnight over the Embankment wall; a sudden fling of his arms: a great splash in the water. Surely, and not without reason whoever was within sight and hearing seemed (and there always seemed to be some one near) would at once rush at me and seize me. In all probability they would think it was a baby. What on earth would be the good of telling a London constable that I had come out into the cold and come down alone to the river to get rid of a` pack of poetry? I could almost hear his gruff, sneering laugh: "You tell that to the Marines, my son!"

So far I do not know how long l strayed up and down, increasingly fearful of being watched, .summoning up my courage to take the; plunge and quailing from it at the last moment. At last I did it. In the middle of, Chelsea Bridge there are projecting circular bays with seats in them. In my agony of decision I left the Embankment and hastened straight for the first of these. When I reached it I knelt on the seat. Looking over, I hesitated again. But I had reached the turning-point. "What!" I thought savagely, "'under the resolute mask that you show your friends is there really a shrinking and contemptible coward? You fall now, you must never, hold your head up again. Anyhow, what if you are hinged for it? Good God: you worm; better men than you have gone to the gallows." With" the courage of despair took a heave. The sack dropped sheer. A vast splash. Then silence fell again. No one came. I turned home; and as I walked l thought a little sadly of all those books falling into the cold torrent, settling slowly down through the pitchy dark, and subsiding at last on the ooze of the bottom, there to lie forlorn and forgotten whilst the unconscious world of men went on.

Horrible bad books, poor innocent books, you are lying there still: covered, perhaps, with mud by this time, with only a stray rag of your sacking sticking out of the slime into the opaque brown tides. Odes to Diana, Sonnets to Ethel, Dramas on the Love of Lancelot, Stanzas on a First Glimpse of \/enice, you lie there in a living death, and your fate is perhaps worse than you deserved.

Words' Meanings

Words Explained:

Whitaker's Amanac : it is a compendium of general information regarding the government, finance, population and commerce of the world, with special reference to the British Empire and the United States, besides

being an almanac in the ordinary sense. Almanac is at calendar. indigestibles books that cannot be easily digested; dull, hard to understand.

reluctant : unwilling

sortout : put into different groups according to size, quality. shadow of the

rope :

fear of being hanged.

evict : expel from house etc., by legal process.

accumulate : get together by additions.

kitchen range : fireplace for cooking.

consume them destroy as by fire

granite : hard grey stone.

consign : give up to.

cold nip in the

air : feeling of cold.

swag : stolen goods.

investigation : inquiry

furtive : secret, not open.

swirls : circling motion of water, air, etc

automatically : unconsciously.

rumination : absorbed in thought.

unconcern : easy in mind.

pedestrian : going on foot, a person walking.

tramp : person who goes from place to place and does no regular work measured step : slow regular steps.

Measured step : slow regular steps.

gruff, sneering

laugh :

rough, unpleasing in voice, sneenng laugh smile

unkmdly

tell that to the

marines :

a phrase that expresses disbelief and ridicule

strayed : wandered.

qualing : being cowed, afraid.

agony : great pain of mind or body.

resolute

mask....

coward :

make a show of being brave but are a coward at

heart

heave : lifting something heavy

ooze : wet; liquid mud

forlorn : unhappy, uncared for

slime : mud.

opaque : not letting light through.

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1. What sort of books were presented by the British public to soldiers?

2. Was it interest of soldiers that prompted their action or was it the wish to get rid of useless books?

3. Why should bad books be destroyed?

4. Why is it difficult to destroy books?

5. Why could not the author burn the unwanted books’

6. How did he decide to get rid of them?

7. Describe the author’s midnight venture to throw the books in the river and the suspicions which his action were likely to arouse.

8. How did he muster up courage at last to fling them into the river?

9. Did he come to have a feeling for those books once he had got rid of them?

Answers to the above Questions

 Original Test of HSSC 2 English Book 2, English Notes, FBISE, Articles, Lessons of Class Second Year, Fs. C, FG Board Islamabad, English Language, Language Learning, Comprehension

Lesson No. 4 End of Term (Original Text)

END OF TERM

David Daiches

I believe a school teacher wrote a book some years ago with title "Friday Thank God". That phrase expresses perfectly my attitude to the arrival of the week end during term time when I was a schoolboy. The daily grind of school, with its abundant homework, its fierce competition, the sense of never being able to relax, pressed heavily upon me in spite of the fact that I often the actual classroom work. Waking up in the morning with the knowledge that at had to get out of bed, that there was no possibility of turning over for an extra doze, and seeing the hours of school stretching ahead, was a dismal experience on a Monday. We had a maid once who would climb each morning with grim steps up to the attic floor where Lionel and I slept in one bedroom and my sister Sylvia in another, and announce in deep, funeral tones: "Lionel, David, Sylvia- time!" I used to lie waiting for that ominous tread on the uncarpeted attic stairs, and the voice it heralded sounded in my ears like a summons to damnation. Thinking was always worse than the reality; I don't remember ever being especially unhappy in class; but the oppressive weight of the knowledge of a full day's school ahead remained a characteristic sensation of my childhood and disappeared only after I had left school and entered the university, where the smaller number of classes to be attended and the freedom of the student to come and go meant a completely new kind of academic world. To wake up on a Thursday morning to feel the end of the week already lying ahead: Friday morning was positively rose-coloured. The last 'period' (as each of our lessons was called) on a Friday, whatever the subject, had its happy flavour of the end of the week, and one walked home from school on a Friday afternoon (however much homework had been assigned for the Monday) with the tread of an escaped prisoner. Friday night, with two solid days before school again, was the best night of the week; Saturday night, with still a whole day between it and Monday, was  pleasant in a quite different way; Sunday night was full of the threatof Monday morning.

Sometimes there were unexpected respites - a half holiday to let us attend a football match which some unforeseen circumstances had caused to be cancelled the preceding Saturday, or the sudden dismissal of school an hour or two before the usual time because of some unexpected crisis or celebration. But these were few and far between. Once a term we had the annual mid-term holiday, a Monday off, which made a luxuriously long week-end (but it seemed to go just as fast as ordinary weekends), and occasionally in winter if there had been a continuous hard frost for some days We would get a whole day's 'skating holiday'. These were blessed breaks in routine, but not, of course, comparable to the holidays we got at Christmas and at Easter - three weeks each in my earlier school days, later tragically reduced to a fortnight and then (if my recollection of loss is not misleading pie) to a mere ten days. But 'the' holidays were the summer holidays, the two months' vacation we got in the summer time, and it was these months towards which the whole year moved.

Two months seemed a long, long time in those days; indeed, I used to have the feeling that, `for all practical purposes, I could look forward to a period of permanent felicity. I would walk home across the Meadows in the July sunshine, wearing my summer school clothes of grey cricket shirt, grey shorts, and red Weston's blazer, and savour my happiness with conscious relish. I could hardly believe that three strenuous school terms had indeed rolled away and the longed for, dreamed of almost (it seemed at times) mythical summer holidays were at hand, unspoilt as yet, lying intact and promising just ahead. It all seemed too good to be true. Wishes didn't come true in this life - I knew that: all my early childhood I longed desperately for a tricycle, which my parents could never afford, and later the wish was transferred for a bicycle, and there, too I was permanently disappointed. (I bought my first bicycle for myself when I was

.twenty-one with prize money I had won at Edinburgh University) How often had I stood outside sweet shops with empty pockets longing for a penny or two to materialize somehow or hung on the outskirts of a crowd around an ice-cream barrow wondering whether the ice-cream man would be miraculously inspired to offer me a 'cornet' or a 'slider' free. These things never happened. (The few pence a week pocket-money we received was to ,be put into a money box and saved, and during our early childhood Lionel, Sylvia and I never had anything to spend for ourselves). Yet summer and the summer holidays did come; the school year did come to an end; and one did find oneself at last standing by the trunks and suitcases outside No.6,Miller field Place, waiting for the taxi (glorious vehicle) that was to convey the family and its luggage to the railway station.

Words Meanings

Words Explained:

week-end : Saturday and Sunday, sometimes Friday and Monday.

grind : hard work.

relax : rest from work.

doze : sleep.

dismal : sad, without comfort.

grim : hard, cruel.

funereal : gloomy, dismal, dark

ominous : being or giving bad omen.

herald : proclaim the approach of.

damnation : condemnation to hell

anticipation : know, realize beforehand.

sensation : being conscious of some effect on one body feeling.

rose-coloured : beautiful, pleasing

flavour : quality of taste mixed with smell gem

respite : time of rest

26

crisis : time of great danger.

routine : regular, fixed order of doing things

felicity : intense happiness.

savour : special taste or smell of something; suggestion of some quality.

relish : the special taste or quality of something pleasing.

strenuous : using, needing great force, hard working.

mythical : without existence in fact.

materialize : take form or shape.

outskirts : outer edge.

miraculously : in a strange unexpected way.

inspire : put thought or feeling into a person.

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1. What was the Daiches' attitude towards the week-end as a school boy? Why did he long for it?

2. What was his general view of school life?

3. He liked holidays for their freedom - freedom from what

4. How did he spend his summer holidays?

5. Wishes don`t come true in this life, writes Daiches. What are the things he longed for but could not have?

6. What did he do with his pocket money?

Answers to the Questions

 Original Test of HSSC 2 English Book 2, English Notes, FBISE, Articles, Lessons of Class Second Year, Fs. C, FG Board Islamabad, English Language, Language Learning, Comprehension

Controlling Our Health is in Our Own Hand

 Overeating or Gluttony

It is human need to eat something  from time to time. But whatever bad we see or find in the world is gluttony which means habitual greed or excess in eating. In the broader sense it means over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or wealth items to the point of extravagance or waste. It stands for the excessive desires for food and sex and it is a tendency indicating self-feebleness, greedy nature, and slavery of instincts.

 Reasons for Overeating

There are some reasons for gluttony and overdosing. The following reason we find:

1.  Human greed for filling one's stomach with more and more food

2.  Worms in belly which eats what we eat (For example, the symptoms of tapeworms is extreme kind of hunger

3. Temptation towards delicious foods

4. Reaction to long termed poverty or hunger etc. 

5. Stress and Depression

How Does a Glutton Look Like

While eating food with extreme kind of greed and concentration, one seems to be like a dog. Gluttony is worse than even the eating style of dogs.It seems that one's taste overrules the taste and one's want want outweighs need.

 How To Avoid Gluttony

There is a common proverb: Eat to live, don't live to eat.

Food in whatever form we have is necessary for life but the choice is ours whether eat good but less tasty food or no good but spicy and more delicious food. It is an open truth that those who devour well seasoned foods invite some health problems which later on take an alarming dimension. Spices are not bad but their maximum and unnecessary use causes stomach burning or peptic ulcer. In the beginning spicy food give you the taste of the tongue and mouth as whole but the later effects create big problems for stomach and intestines. Please avoid using too much and too many spices. If we want avoid gluttony we are in strict need to develop a limit of appetites for other pleasant and good things,such as reading good literature, reading good books, enjoying nature, work for the sake of enjoyment.

Health
Spices
Spicy Foods
Foods
Side-Effects

Lesson No. 3 - Why Boys Fail in College (Original Text)

Why Boys Fail in College

Written by Herbert E. Hawkes.

Of the boys who do not reach their natural academic boundary during the course of their college career, but who fail to get through, there are two main classes: those who try, and those who do not try. Many boys attempt seriously to make good, and really have the native ability to do so, but find it almost impossible to sit at a desk and concentrate on the tasks assigned. There is the boy who sits down to study, open his book but before starting on his work says to himself, "I think that I had better sharpen my pencil; it needs it badly." And when he has sharpened it, he observes that all his pencils need sharpening. And so on, until his time is gone and nothing has been done. Such nervous habits are not easy to uproot, and, so far as I can see cannot be eradicated by anyone but the boy himself. Others can see the difficulty but the boy must take himself by the collar and make himself cultivate a poise and calm that smothers the fidgets. Until he does this, he does not really try, although he thinks he's trying and often spends more time in the presence of an open book than many a boy of equal ability who does good work.

A common cause of failure is a mistaken ambition for the boy on the part of his parents. More often than I should wish, I find a boy who is not showing any interest in his work and who is not trying to do it with any distinction, because he is following a direction, mapped out by his parents, that runs counter to all of his interests and abilities. I have made a number of very warm enemies among the parents of their son to be a physician, or a dentist, or an engineer. It may be that the boy has ability enough to be anyone of these things, but the long and short of it is, he does not want to be. He wants to be a theatrical manager, or a businessman, or a book -illustrator. It may be unreasonable for the boy to turn his back on a fine open in the dental profession in favour of business. But reason cannot control all of these matters As well argued with a person that he ought to like onions when he detests them As a general thing, the boy wins out in such controversies. And he should Also, be it said, the parent whom I have offended usually comes around after a term of years and tells me that his son was right and that he is thankful to me for taking the part of the boy in the argument. If such a boy fails, it is because he cannot bring himself to try to do the work that is distasteful to him, and that he feels is leading him in the wrong direction. If the college is alive to its work of advice, such cases are caught before the failure is complete.

Another type of boy who does not try is the very bright boy who has always done his school work without effort, and who has never learned what real application is. He supposes that he can float through college with as little effort as he did through school. I sometimes think that the bright boy who has always depended his

ability to get things quickly, is the most pitiable object among all our students. For it is almost a tragedy to see all of this keenness going to waste, and to feel that the entire opportunity which the college has to offer is passed up became of a too receptive mind. The cure for this sort of thing is again not easy, for it involves an entire change of attitude, and the forming of a completely new set of habits. No one can do this but the boy himself. All that the rest of us can do is to point out what is the matter.

The question of health, both physical and mental, is always one of the reasons for failure. If an adequate health service is available in the college, and proper cooperation exists between the teaching staff and the office the college doctor, an immense number of failures can be avoided and, what is just as important, the reason for inability to do satisfactory college work can be clearly understood by the boy, his parents and the college authorities. In the case of poor academic work, the reason for which is not apparent, it is my custom always to ask the student to undergo a thorough physical examination. It is surprising to find out in how large a percentage of such cases the university physician finds an adequate reason for the difficulty. Tuberculosis, had tonsils, sleeping sickness, poor digestion, various forms of mental and nervous difficulty have been brought to light by the doctor during the past few months, to the unspeakable relief of the student and enlightenment of the faculty. Occasionally, one meets an old-fashioned person like the father who told me a few months ago that, although we had arranged to have his son`s tonsils removed without expense, he would not consent to the operation. He asserted mat God put those tonsils in his son's throat for some good purpose, and that he would not stand for their removal. Since the boy was absorbing too much poison to permit proper application to his college Work, we had to ask him to go home. Of course, such cases are rare. But it is necessary to keep constantly in mind the simple fact that there is no substitute for health, and that, however such a man may know. It E not of much value unless he possesses the physical vigour

to bring it to bear on the world's problems.

Nowadays, when most ambitious boys want to go to college, the financial pressure is a very serious one. A few parents take the position that the boy should earn his Way through college for the good of his soul. As a matter of fact, no boy ought to be compelled to his entire Way through college if it can in any way be avoided. Not only does he get a mighty poor living by the process, but a mighty poor education as well. If the boy ought to go to college at all, he ought to be trusted to make good use of reasonable contribution from his parents toward expenses. Any parent owes this much to his son. The boy did not ask his parents to bring him into the world. They are responsible for his being here, and consequently they have the responsibility for giving him the best equipment possible to meet the World's problems.

Nevertheless, many boys are cast entirely on their own resources for their college expenses. And it is always to the detriment of their health, or the value of their education, or both. Any boy can earn a part of his  expenses without hurting himself, and in my experience many boys are willing to earn more than their share in

order to save the burden of their parents. But to see boys by the dozen take jobs lasting from six o'clock in the evening till two in the morning, six days in week; to see boys undergoing transfusion of -blood to get money for their food and books, is a heartrending spectacle. Many of our boys of finest character and excellent ability are doing just this kind of thing. And inevitably it is an important reason for apparent failure. Most colleges do all they can with scholarship funds to alleviate this situation, but even when everything

possible is done, every dean who knows his students can recall many cases of boys who have been obliged to drop out for the lack of a little money to see them through.

There are always a goodly number of undergraduates whose heads are turned and whose judgement is perverted by the attractiveness of athletic sports and literary (so called) activity. All of these features of college life have their place, and should receive the support of those students who are interested in them. In my experience, the awakening of a clear judgement as to what the college is for, is not as difficult as is often supposed. If a boy is too much interested in these side shows he ought to get out of the main tent and

become professional. But most of them really are not, and if reasoned with by a friend who knows youth and understands the importance of the college opportunity, they will not allow themselves to be swept off their feet by athletics. I do not think that this sort .of thing is as serious a reason for failure as do some of the critics of our colleges who see things from the outside and at a long range.

A few lazy bluffers drift into college and usually drift out again. Most of them have not found any serious interest in life, and some of them never will. It is usually wise to let them retire to the cold world for a reason and find out by experience how much demand there is for a lazy bluffer. Sometimes they learn their lesson and return to do first rate work. But the burden of proof is always on them to show that they mean business. On the whole, the problem that the college dean faces calls for about the same diagnostic ability as the physician's. He is helping the young men under him to see life steadily and see it whole. If he can save boys from failure through foolishness, sickness and sin, he is doing his part of the job.

NOTES

(Words Meanings)

Words Explained:
do not .... boundary: do not complete their education, fail to get the required degree, etc.
get through : pass
native ability : natural ability
concentrate....massigned: give full attention to the given work.
eradicate : root out, put an end to
take collar : deals firmly with himself
poised. fidgets : balance and self~disc1pl1ne which keep back nervous excitement
mapped out : planned.
run-counter to : go against.
long and short of it : all that can or need he said
opening : position which business is offering
detest : have great hate for.
win out : succeed.
controversy : argument especially of public sort as in a newspaper
offend : displease
himself to try : does not feel inclined to try
alive to : conscious of
application : to apply
float through college: pass, get through.
keenness : strong desire.
passes up : not used, not utilized
receptive : able or quick to receive ideas
attitude : point of view, way of looking at something
adequate : enough, satisfactory.
health service : medical aid
apparent : clearly seen
enlightenment : knowledge.
substitute : person or thing taking the place of another
to bring it to bear : apply
earn his way : earn to pay for his education
mighty : very large and strong
detriment : damage, loss, injury.
transfusion of blood : putting blood from one living body into another
heartrending : very painful.
inevitably : bound to happen, as a matter of course, necessarily.
see them through: enable them to finish their course.
heads are turned : feel very vain.
perverted: get turned to a wrong use.
side shows : games etc. which are not a real part of college education
professional : doing a thing for a living.
swept off their feet : allow themselves to be carried away
see things at a long range : from a distance.
bluffer : one who bluffs to deceive others
drift : go aimlessly.
cold world : hard unsympathetic world.
burden of proof : obligation to prove a given statement.
see it whole: see life in a balanced way and from all

sides.

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1. According to the author there are some boys who fail because they do not try.Who are they? Can we help them?

2. How does mistaken ambition on the part of boys and their parents lead to the failure of the boys?

3. There are some boys who have done well at school but fail to make their mark at college. Who are they? Do you' have such boys in college in your country?

4. How does financial pressure lead to the failure of students described in the lesson? Do you have similar cases in your country?

5. To what extent does the question of health lead to failure at college? How far can the college authorities with their medical officers help students in such cases?

6. What place would you accord to sportsmen in colleges?

7. There are some students who join college for the fun of it. Should they be allowed to stay?

 Answers to the above Questions

Original Texts of the HSSC 1 & 2 - English Book 1, Book 2 and Book 3 (FBISE)

 Original Text of the Lessons Given in Book - I, Book - II and Book - III

English Book 2  

FBISE, HSSC English Compulsory

i. The Dying Sun
ii. Using the Scientific Method
iii. Why boys fail in college
iv. End of Term
v. On destroying books
vi. The man who was a hospital
vii. My financial career
viii. China's way to progress