Question

adapted excerpt from "Some Rights of Children as Persons" in School Education
by Charlotte Mason

In another way, more within our present control, we do not let children alone enough in their work. We prod them continually and do not let them stand or fall by their own efforts. One of the features, and one of the disastrous features, of modern society, is that, in our laziness, we depend upon prodders and encourage a vast system of prodding. We are prodded to our social duties, to our charitable duties, and to our religious duties. . . . Perhaps it is a result of the hurry of the age that there is a curious division of labor, and society falls into those who prod and those who are prodded. Not that anybody prods in all directions, nor that anybody else offers himself entirely as a pincushion. It is truer, perhaps, to say that we all prod, and that we are all prodded. Now, an occasional prick is stimulating and wholesome, but the force of inertia1 in human nature is such that we would rather lean up against a wall of spikes than not lean at all. What we must guard against in the training of children is the danger of their getting into the habit of being prodded to every duty and every effort. Our whole system of school policy is largely a system of prods. Marks, prizes, and exhibitions are all prods; and a system of prodding is apt to obscure the meaning of must and ought for the boy or girl who gets into the habit of mental and moral lolling up against his prods.

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1. lack of desire or movement

3
Select the correct answer from each drop-down menu.
Read the excerpt. Then choose the correct way to complete the sentence.

The underlined sentence in the excerpt is an example of a
because the author
.

Answer 1

The underlined sentence in the excerpt is an example of a hyperbole because the author uses exaggeration (the image of preferring to lean against a wall of spikes) to emphasize how strong people's inertia is and how they come to depend on being prodded.