Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
The school bus in our colony leaves at 7:10 am, so my cousin Tanvi, who is fifteen, sets her alarm for 5:45. Most mornings she sleeps through it. Her mother calls this laziness. The biology of adolescence suggests something less moral and more mechanical.
Every body keeps time with an inner clock, and one of its signals is melatonin, a hormone that tells the brain that night has come. In the teenage years, the evening release of melatonin begins later than it did in childhood, often by an hour or more. A fourteen-year-old lying awake at midnight is frequently not defying anyone. Her brain has simply not yet been told that it is time to sleep. The alarm, however, does not move. The loss is taken from the last hours of the night, when much of our dreaming sleep happens.
The effects are quiet, which is partly why they are ignored. A drowsy student does not faint in the assembly. She reads the same paragraph three times, snaps at her younger brother and reaches for a second biscuit. Anyone who has taught a first-period class knows the peculiar torpor of a room full of fifteen-year-olds at ten to eight.
Some schools, mostly abroad, have tried starting later, sometimes by as little as forty-five minutes. The reports are cautiously encouraging: fewer heads on desks, somewhat better attendance. The objections are practical, and not foolish. Buses must be rescheduled. Parents leave for offices that open at fixed hours. Evening tuitions get pushed later still, which rather defeats the purpose.
Tanvi’s school has not changed anything. She has stopped arguing with her mother, though, and now leaves her phone in the kitchen after ten. It is a small truce with a clock she never chose to set.
Which of the following statements are NOT true according to the passage?
(A) In adolescence, melatonin begins to be released later in the evening than in childhood.
(B) The schools that tried a later start found that their students were no longer sleepy in class.
(C) The sleep lost to an early alarm is taken from the last part of the night.
(D) Tanvi’s school is one of the schools that have tried a later start.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → (B) and (D) only
The question asks for the statements that are NOT true.
(A) In adolescence, melatonin begins to be released later in the evening than in childhood. — True.
- The passage says the evening release of melatonin “begins later than it did in childhood”.
(B) The schools that tried a later start found that their students were no longer sleepy in class. — Not true.
- The reports are only “cautiously encouraging”, with “fewer heads on desks”.
- Fewer does not mean none.
(C) The sleep lost to an early alarm is taken from the last part of the night. — True.
- The passage says the loss is taken from “the last hours of the night”.
(D) Tanvi’s school is one of the schools that have tried a later start. — Not true.
- The passage says, “Tanvi’s school has not changed anything.”