SSC CGL 2025 PYQ — Question 85

SSC CGL - 14 Oct 2025 - Shift 1 • English • Q85

In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:

To speak of skill education merely in terms of employment is to overlook its deeper cartography. A skill, unlike rote instruction, is (1) -given not not only through repetition but through failure-through the art of learning why something didn't work. In societies obsessed with certification, the nuanced textures of experiential learning often vanish behind laminated credentials. Yet, the true economy of skill is shaped not in boardrooms or training modules, but in the improvisations of the workshop, the reworkings of the prototype, the quiet recalibration of hand and intent. The question, then, is not how many are trained, but how many are truly (2) just tools but the time to develop trust in them. Skill is not the opposite of theory, but its extension into movement. And yet, the classroom remains strangely allergic to the tactile. The logic of assessments continues to value abstraction over (3) reducing competence to the ability to recall, not to remake. In the rush to map vocational pathways, we risk scripting lives as modules-linear, predictable, void of deviation. But skill, like thought, thrives in divergence. Its pedagogy must embrace the messiness of practice, the necessity of slowness, and the possibility of (4) To prepare youth for uncertainty, we must teach them to linger-not just to do, but to (5) doing.

What should come in the place of blank number (1)?

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Correct Answer

cultivated

Explanation

The word cultivated is the most appropriate fit for the first blank. In the context of the passage, the author is describing skill education as a process of growth and development that involves repetition and failure. The term cultivated implies a process of nurturing, refinement, and gradual development, which aligns perfectly with the author's argument that skills are developed through the art of learning why something did not work.

The other options are less fitting. Absorbed implies a passive intake of information, whereas the passage emphasizes active participation and failure. Inherited suggests something passed down genetically or historically, which contradicts the emphasis on experiential learning. Embedded implies something fixed or set deep within, rather than a process of active growth.