Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
The first town my Class 8 students built in Minecraft was a mess. I had asked for a model of a Harappan city, and within twenty minutes the screen held three towers, a lava moat and one ambitious pig farm. Nobody had drawn a plan. Nobody thought one was needed, because in a game where any block can be broken and put back, a mistake seems to cost nothing.
That turned out to be the useful part. In the third lesson, the group in charge of the drains found that their streets sloped the wrong way and the water had nowhere to go. Fixing it meant tearing up two days of work. They argued, sulked, and then, for the first time, took out paper and sketched a grid before placing a single block.
I am wary of the claims made for games in schools. Much of the enthusiasm is really relief that the children are quiet, and a class can spend an hour in Minecraft and learn mainly how to make a roof look good. The game does not teach planning by itself. If anything, its endless freedom to break and rebuild invites the opposite habit.
What a shared build offers is a slow kind of consequence. A mistake on a worksheet is corrected in red ink and forgotten by Friday. A mistake in a shared world stays on the screen, in everyone’s way, until someone repairs it. My students learnt patience less from the game than from living with their own careless foundations for a fortnight. Whether any of this counts as history, I still cannot say. The inspector who visited last month mainly wanted to know why Mohenjo-daro had a pig farm.
Which of the following best expresses the central argument of the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → The game alone does not teach planning, but mistakes left standing in a shared build can teach it slowly.
The writer is a teacher. The writer doubts that the game itself teaches planning. But a shared build makes students live with their mistakes, and that has value.
- The writer says plainly that the game “does not teach planning by itself”. Its freedom to rebuild even “invites the opposite habit”.
- The change came when the drains group had to tear up two days of work. Only then did they sketch a plan.
- The last paragraph sums it up. A mistake in a shared world “stays on the screen” until someone repairs it. The students learnt patience from living with their “careless foundations for a fortnight”.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Minecraft should replace worksheets in history lessons, as a shared build corrects errors better than red ink. — Incorrect. Overstated: The writer contrasts worksheets with shared builds but never asks for worksheets to be replaced. The writer is “wary” (careful, a little doubtful) of big claims for games.
Option 2: Students who play building games at home come to class already patient and used to planning their work. — Incorrect. Contradicted: The students began with no plan at all. “Nobody thought one was needed.”
Option 4: Games in class mostly keep students quiet and teach them little beyond how to make a model look good. — Incorrect. Only partly true: The writer does admit this risk in the third paragraph. But the passage goes on to show what the shared build did teach.