Reading Skills Diagnostic Pre-Test

Read the chart below and answer the questions that follow.

-from Introduction to the Foundations of American Education, 13th Ed., Johnson, Musial, Hall, Gollnick, & Dupius. Boston: Pearson, 2005, pg 19.


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[URL=1. [/URL]
In which category do the teachers want the most change?

a)

Student to teacher ratio.

b)

Higher salaries.

c)

All categories that contain an asterisk (*) are important to teachers.

d)

Parent participation.

The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project
1. The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project has been operating for more than forty years; it emphasizes intellectual and social development through active learning. The program is designed for children of low socioeconomic status and low IQ scores who are at high risk for failure in school. Children ages three and four attend the preschool program weekdays for 2.5 hours each day, followed by teacher visits to the child's family for 1.5 hours each week. There are also monthly parent meetings.
2. An evaluation of this program followed up annually with the children until age twenty-seven provides a fascinating longitudinal assessment of the long-term impact of this preschool program. The children participating in the program were about half as likely to be arrested or land in court as juveniles or adults, compared to a matched group of nonparticipating children from identical backgrounds. Participating children also were significantly more likely to have children only after marriage, to have close family ties and friendships, to experience academic success, to be employed, and to earn higher wages. These positive findings translate to savings for the welfare system, special education, the criminal justice system, and crime victims; and program participants were more likely to have greater earnings to generate general tax revenue.
3. Early life interventions are important because studies have identified childhood risk factors for later delinquency. These include poor language skills, poor attachment to parents and caregivers, poor parenting skills, and multiple stresses on the family. These risk factors lead to failure in school, which is significantly related to delinquency.
4. The Prenatal and Early Childhood Nurse Home Visitation Program is another program that is directed to reduce these identified risk factors that contribute to delinquency. This program builds parenting skills and family unity as it impacts on child rearing. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America is a national network of more than 2,500 clubs that involve more than three million school-age boys and girls in constructive youth development activities, educational support, and adult supervision.
5. A group of researchers convened by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention agreed that "implementing family, school, and community interventions is the best way to prevent children from developing into seriously violent juvenile offenders." Although none of the programs described in this section are crime prevention programs, they all have direct implications for the prevention of crime and the involvement of the criminal justice system in the future.
—from Albanese, Criminal Justice, 3d ed., Boston: Pearson, 2005, p. 463-64

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Under the weak-mayor plan, the mayor does not have special executive powers. In fact, most of the power rests with the council. The council is elected by the people and acts as both a legislative and executive body. The council can choose the mayor from among its members. The council also chooses other officials, makes ordinances, and decides how money should be spent.

[URL= The council is
______

[/URL].

a)

thorough

b)

complex

c)

musical

d)

independent

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A reputation isn't words, it's behavior. You have to live the personal brand you want to project. If you're habitually late to meetings, learn to come two minutes early. If you dress a little sloppily at work, cleaning up your look will strengthen your reputation-it will give you a more credible personal brand.

[URL= In most jobs, it is the little things that make one a
______
employee.
[/URL]

Myths, fairy tales, and folk tales are time-honored traditions in many countries. Before people could write, they told stories to make each other laugh, cry, or shake with fear. These stories do more than just entertain. They preserve the earliest ideas and imaginings of a people. A myth may explain why something happens in nature. It may tell what causes the seasons, for example. A tale may show us the rewards for our behavior and teach us a lesson. Often, both myths and tales are tied to what people in earlier times found sacred and mysterious.
[URL= Myths are told to help people
______
mysteries.
[/URL]
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[URL= Myths are told to help people _____ mysteries.

a)

preserve

b)

avoid

c)

create

d)

interpret

Under the weak-mayor plan, the mayor does not have special executive powers. In fact, most of the power rests with the council. The council is elected by the people and acts as both a legislative and executive body. The council can choose the mayor from among its members. The council also chooses other officials, makes ordinances, and decides how money should be spent.
[URL= The council is
______

[/URL].
<!-- NORMAL_QUESTION : 13
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[URL= The council is _____.

a)

independent

b)

thorough

c)

musical

d)

complex

He arrived at his office, with all its familiar trappings, and he felt comfortable and at home. After flipping his computer on and checking his voice-mail messages, he picked up an envelope from the center of his desk. It was his paycheck from his employer, United Global Applied Technologies (UGAT). The first thing he noticed as he looked it over was that his gross pay was one dollar and ninety-eight cents! After deductions this left him with a net take home pay of one dollar and seventeen cents. Then he noticed the date. It was for twenty years in the future!
[URL= His paycheck was
______

[/URL].
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[URL= His paycheck was _____.

a)

appropriate

b)

startling

c)

enormous

d)

delayed

A reputation isn't words, it's behavior. You have to live the personal brand you want to project. If you're habitually late to meetings, learn to come two minutes early. If you dress a little sloppily at work, cleaning up your look will strengthen your reputation-it will give you a more credible personal brand.
[URL= In most jobs, it is the little things that make one a
______
employee.
[/URL]
<!-- NORMAL_QUESTION : 13
-->

[URL= In most jobs, it is the little things that make one a _____ employee.

a)

raucous

b)

carefree

c)

distinctive

d)

scheming

Peru lies along the Pacific coast of South America, south of Colombia and Ecuador, and north of Chile. The Andes Mountains run the length of the country. A high plateau called the Altiplano is home to descendants of the Incas and other indigenous groups. Many of them live much as their ancestors did, and speak Indian languages. The economic center of Peru is Lima, on the coast. Peru has been slow to modernize and industrialize. It has also suffered from military dictatorships and government corruption, but today has an elected democratic government.
[URL= Peru has changed
______

[/URL].
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[URL= Peru has changed _____.

a)

uneasily

b)

gradually

c)

urgently

d)

foolishly

The United Nations is an international organization meant to resolve disputes and promote peace. Almost all nations of the world belong to the United Nations. Every member has a vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations. But only the United Nations Security Council can make decisions over the use of force. The United States and four other permanent members have the power to prevent action in the Security Council.
[URL= The United States can
______
the activities of the Security Council.
[/URL]
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[URL= The United States can _____ the activities of the Security Council.

a)

illustrate

b)

renew

c)

pursue

d)

influence

As one author wrote: "My hotel (in Jiddah, a city on the western coast of Saudi Arabia) was typical. The receptionist was Lebanese... Yemeni and Pakistani construction workers were building an extension to the hotel under a Palestinian foreman. When I came to leave, a Jordanian made up the bill. But it was a Saudi Arabian who drove me to the airport because taxi driving, like the army and police, is reserved for nationals."
[URL= The author noticed the
______
variety.
[/URL]
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[URL= The author noticed the _____ variety.

a)

ethnic

b)

fashion

c)

educational

d)

architectural

The theory of the moon's origin that best fits the evidence is called the collision theory. About 4.5 billion years ago, when Earth was very young, an object at least as large as Mars collided with Earth. Material from the object and Earth's outer layers was thrown into orbit around Earth. Eventually, this material combined to form the moon.
For thousands of years, people could see shapes on the surface of the moon, but didn't know what caused them. The ancient Greeks thought that the moon was perfectly smooth. It was not until about 400 years ago that scientists could study the moon more closely.
[URL= People were curious about the moon's
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= People were curious about the moon's _____.

a)

orbit

b)

composition

c)

boundaries

d)

destruction

Temperate rain forests grow farther from the equator, where the climate is cooler. Here there are distinct seasons, when some parts of the year are cool and others warm. Many of the trees are conifer trees, which have needlelike leaves that drop gradually all through the year. The trees are covered in mosses and lichens. There are temperate rain forests in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and parts of South America.
[URL= The seasons
______
in temperate rain forests.
[/URL]
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[URL= The seasons _____ in temperate rain forests.

a)

erupt

b)

shrivel

c)

vary

d)

compete

Between 1970 and 1980, high demand caused oil prices to soar. The impact of these soaring prices on the world economy was great. Developing countries had to cancel social programs in order to pay for oil. Companies in wealthier countries passed along their increased costs for fuel by raising prices. Runaway inflation resulted in many countries. OPEC has expanded to include more nations from Africa, Latin America, Southwest Asia, and Southeast Asia. As world demand for oil has increased, so too has OPEC's power.
[URL= OPEC's influence has been
______
by the demand for oil.
[/URL]
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[URL= OPEC's influence has been _____ by the demand for oil.

a)

paralyzed

b)

complicated

c)

acknowledged

d)

enlarged

Early in his career, he had had to stay and eat in separate hotels and restaurants from his teammates. Even late in the 1960s, some places didn't want to serve Roberto. Roberto, a Puerto Rican, sometimes received the same racist, second-rate treatment some black American players-and citizens-received. Roberto did his part to try to change America's prejudiced ways. He played great on the field, of course, but more importantly, he demanded and earned respect off the field, too.
[URL= Roberto had to deal with
______
.
[/URL]
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-->

[URL= Roberto had to deal with _____.

a)

discrimination

b)

fussiness

c)

apprehension

d)

commendation

After studying the Coelophysis bones to learn what these dinosaurs were like when they were alive, the scientists turned their attention to the positions of the bones in the ground. The arrangement of the bones might give some clues to the mystery of what happened to all these dinosaurs. Why and how did they die?
[URL= The
______
might help the scientists solve other mysteries.
[/URL]
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[URL= The _____ might help the scientists solve other mysteries.

a)

assembly

b)

alternative

c)

investigation

d)

commitment

In the Middle Ages, noble knights had defended the land. In the 1600s, Richelieu and Louis XIV had crushed the nobles' military power but given them other rights-under strict royal control. Those rights included top jobs in government, the army, the courts, and the Church. At Versailles, ambitious nobles competed for royal appointments while idle courtiers enjoyed endless entertainments. Many nobles, however, lived far from the center of power. Though they owned land, they had little money income. As a result, they felt the pinch of trying to maintain their status in a period of rising prices.
[URL= Many nobles had become less
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= Many nobles had become less _____.

a)

authoritative

b)

gallant

c)

cultured

d)

vulnerable

Ursula, a giant Pacific octopus who lived at the Seattle Aquarium in Washington State, had excellent aim. The trouble was her choice of targets. Every night this crabby sea creature blasted water out through the breathing tube on the side of her head, completely drenching the researcher whose job it was to check Ursula's tank. "This woman actually felt picked on," says biologist Roland Anderson. "Ursula never soaked anyone else, only this researcher." The cold shower was obviously intentional, since an octopus can spray in any direction it wants to. And Ursula turned an angry red every time she did it.
[URL= Ursula's behavior was
______
.
[/URL]
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-->

[URL= Ursula's behavior was _____.

a)

obnoxious

b)

discreet

c)

productive

d)

conservative

Galileo saw that much of the moon's surface is covered with round pits called craters. Some craters are hundreds of kilometers across. For 300 years, scientists thought that the craters on the moon had been made by volcanoes. But about 50 years ago, scientists concluded that the craters on the moon were caused by the impacts of meteoroids, rocks from space.
[URL= Scientists
______
what caused the craters.
[/URL]
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[URL= Scientists _____ what caused the craters.

a)

obscured

b)

experienced

c)

brainstormed

d)

determined

A drought is a prolonged period of inadequate rainfall. When plants adapted to more moderate climates are exposed to drought, they can become stressed and weakened. In a drought, a plant may lose more water through transpiration than it takes up from the soil. This shortage of water inhibits the growth of young leaves, causes existing leaves to wilt, and reduces photosynthesis. Plants respond to drought by conserving water.
[URL= A drought can
______
a plant.
[/URL]
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[URL= A drought can _____ a plant.

a)

cleanse

b)

bolster

c)

endanger

d)

elude

Many people in Central Asia, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, traditionally were nomadic herders. Sheep, goats, and yaks grazed in mountain valleys. Herders lived in yurts, which are large, portable, round tents made of wooden frames covered with felt or skins. Farmers worked small fields in some parts of the region. When the region came under the control of the former Soviet Union, people's lives changed dramatically. The Soviet government forced nomadic peoples to settle in villages and work on massive government farms. They grew wheat and other dryland crops in Kazakhstan. Massive irrigation systems diverted waters from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya to grow cotton in the warmer southern region.
[URL= The nomadic lifestyle was
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= The nomadic lifestyle was _____.

a)

indulged

b)

duplicated

c)

fortified

d)

eliminated

A nation is a group of people who share a language, a history, and an identity. By this definition, there may be more than one people within the borders of a country who call themselves a nation. In the eyes of the world, though, a group of people needs more than a sense of unity in order to be called a nation. It must form a political unit with a well-defined territory and a government that has authority over the people living there.
[URL= Certain
______
must be met in order to be a nation.
[/URL]
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[URL= Certain _____ must be met in order to be a nation.

a)

qualifications

b)

remembrances

c)

percentages

d)

monopolies

Settlement of the region that would become Tennessee began in 1769, when William Bean built a log cabin in Cherokee country, on Boone's Creek, not far from the Watauga River. Soon, several North Carolina families joined him there. Two years later, settlers moved into Carter's River Valley, and then onto the banks of the Nolichucky River a year after that. Together, these little villages would become known as the Watauga Settlements.Not long after the Watauga Settlements were established, Middle Tennessee became home to some settlers. One group chose the Cumberland River as the site of its new village, and in 1780 Nashborough was born.
[URL= The area was _____.
[/URL]
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[URL= The area was _____.

a)

auctioned

b)

colonized

c)

overcome

d)

infected

The Austrian physician Sigmund Freud also challenged faith in reason. He suggested that the subconscious mind drives much human behavior. Freud said that, in civilized society, learned values such as morality and reason help people repress, or check, powerful urges.
But an individual feels constant tension between repressed drives and social training. This tension, argued Freud, may cause psychological illness or physical symptoms, such as paralysis or blindness.
Freud pioneered psychoanalysis, a method of studying how the mind works and treating mental disorders. He analyzed dreams for clues to subconscious desires and developed ways to treat mental illnesses. His ideas had an impact far beyond medicine. Freud's work led artists and writers to explore the subconscious mind.
[URL= Freud's work was
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= Freud’s work was _____.

a)

inexpressible

b)

merciless

c)

profound

d)

heroic

Architects, too, rejected classical traditions and developed new styles to match an industrial, urbanized world. The famous Bauhaus school in Germany influenced architecture by blending science and technology with design. Bauhaus designers used glass, steel, and concrete but little ornamentation. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright reflected the Bauhaus belief that the function of a building should determine its form. When designing a house, he used materials and forms that fit its environment.
[URL= Bauhaus architects designed houses to
______
form and function.
[/URL]
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[URL= Bauhaus architects designed houses to _____ form and function.

a)

integrate

b)

contradict

c)

adorn

d)

eliminate

The biotic and abiotic factors characteristic of a grassland ecosystem determine what types of organisms will be found there. Although many kinds of organisms live in the grasslands, grasses are the most common. Grasslands have hot, dry summers, making rainfall a grassland's most significant limiting factor. Without enough rain, grasslands cannot develop. However, scientists have determined that natural grass fires, ignited by lightning, also play an important role in the development of grasslands.
[URL= The fires are
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= The fires are _____.

a)

inadequate

b)

grotesque

c)

abrasive

d)

beneficial

Take a Polaroid or digital snapshot of your shoes and attach the picture to the outside of the shoebox. I have to admit that when I first saw this done by a client, I thought she was a little compulsive. Over the years, I have come to respect this practice, especially for those who have lifestyles that justify extensive shoe collections.
[URL= This is a(n)
______
technique.
[/URL]
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[URL= This is a(n) _____ technique.

a)

transitional

b)

marketable

c)

organizational

d)

unproductive

Before the war, the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and his friend Georges Braque had created a revolutionary new style, called cubism. They broke three-dimensional objects into fragments and composed them into complex patterns of angles and planes. By redefining objects into separate shapes, they offered a new view of reality.
Later, the Russian Vasily Kandinsky and the German Paul Klee moved even further away from representing reality. Their artwork was abstract, composed of lines, colors, and shapes with no recognizable subject matter at all.
[URL= Their style was
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= Their style was _____.

a)

provisional

b)

restrictive

c)

unexamined

d)

innovative

A huge range of undersea mountains formed a long ridge running north to south along the middle of the ocean bed. Many of the mountains rose to a height of over 27,000 feet (9,000 meters) above the seabed, and the highest of them rose above the ocean's surface to form the Azore Islands. Were these the remains of sunken Atlantis?
[URL= Perhaps Atlantis is now
______
.
[/URL]
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[URL= Perhaps Atlantis is now _____.

a)

exquisite

b)

conceivable

c)

grotesque

d)

monumental

Technology Changes the American People
ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON GIN fficeffice" />
1. Though the technological innovations of the early American republic may seem primitive(ilkel), they generated intense enthusiasm at the time. Observed Tench Coxe, an ardent(gayretli) promoter of American economic development, “Machines, ingeniously(ustalikla) constructed, will give . . . immense assistance” in developing the nation. Coxe’s comment echoed the widely held belief that technological genius was embedded in the American character and that commitment(soz,sadakat) to applied science would foster human progress.
2. One of the most significant technological breakthroughs ( atilim) in the early republic was Eli Whitney’s cotton gin(pamuk circiri). By the 1790s, cotton cultivation ( isleme) was beginning to expand across the American South, as planters began to experiment with the short-staple variety of the crop. Though its fibers (lif) were less luxuriant (gur) than the long-staple cotton that flourished in the hot coastal (kiyisal) lowlands and sea islands of ffice:smarttags" />Georgia and South Carolina, the hardier short-staple variety could be successfully cultivated in large areas of the southern interior. In contrast to the long, silky fibers of long-staple cotton, however, short-staple cotton clung tenaciously (azimlice) to the plant’s sticky, green seeds, making it difficult to prepare the raw cotton for manufacturing into cloth. A slave could clean no more than a pound of short-staple cotton a day.
3. During these same years, demand for cotton of all sorts was growing in England and the American Northeast, where the weaving and spinning machines of new textile factories created an insatiable appetite for the crop. Demand and supply began to converge in 1793 when Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate then supporting himself as a teacher on a Georgia plantation, turned his mind to the problem of short-staple cotton and its seeds. Within a short time he had designed a functioning model of a machine he called a “cotton gin.” In conception it was disarmingly simple, nothing more than a wooden box containing a roller, equipped with wire teeth, designed to pull the fibers through a comb like barrier, thus stripping them from the seeds. A hand crank activated the mechanism. The implications of Whitney’s invention were immediately apparent, for with this crude device a slave could clean up to fifty pounds of short-staple cotton in a day.
4. A variety of circumstances combined to produce the cotton boom that exploded across the American South during the first half of the nineteenth century, a boom that held profound implications for black and white Americans (and in the Civil War crisis, for the nation at large). The cotton gin, fashioned by hand in a plantation shed and then improved by other craftsmen in succeeding decades, played a major role in that fateful development.
—adapted from Nash et al., The American People, 5th edition, 2001, pp. 262-263.
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Jazz, Booze, It, and the Movies
1. The postwar (saves sonrasi) years of the late 1910s and 1920s saw many important changes in American life. It is all too easy to mystify (sasirtmak) history by selecting a single image to stand for a whole period, but there is something inevitable (kacinilmaz) about the image of a flapper, a “jazz baby,” in a short beaded dress and bobbed hair, wearing a jeweled headband, holding a glass of champagne, dancing the Charleston.
2. More than anything else, the Jazz Age seems a period of contradictions.(aykirilik,celiski) Conservative (tutucu) Republican presidents (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover) explicitly pledged to return the nation to “normalcy” in the 1920s, one of the least conservative and least “normal” decades of the century. The sale and purchase of liquor may have been against the law, but more Americans drank more booze than they ever had before. Lubitsch’s and DeMille’s comedies about the rich elite, who lived either in Europe or on Long Island, were as popular as Lloyd’s comedies about the most normal mid-American, middle-class aspirations. (buyuk amac)There were Chaplin’s comedies that despised (kucumsemek) the pursuit of merely material goods, while American society seemed hell bent on acquiring as many of those goods as possible—especially the new automobiles, refrigerators, and radios. Those domestic machines and gadgets by which modern life is often defined first entered middle-class American lives in the 1920s.
3. The word jazz entered mainstream American language at the same time. It didn’t mean anything very precisely; for those who hated it, jazz meant musical noise that was loud and vulgar, too disorganized to be an art. For those who loved it, jazz was rhythm and riffs, the music you danced to and made love to, music that could go anywhere, whether by black composers and musicians like Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Duke Ellington or white composers and musicians like George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman, Bix Beiderbeck, and Helen Kane. Jazz meant about the same thing that rock did a half-century later-the exuberant (coskun), liberating (serbest birakma) music to which young Americans danced. It was also a word that sold movie tickets; a 1927 poster read, “William Fox presents Cupid and the Clock: A Jazz Version of the O. Henry story.”
4. At the center of these changes and contradictions ( aykirilik,celiski) was the new American woman—or, rather, women. The many new types of women on movie screens indicated the conflicting varieties of experience in modern American life. At one extreme there was Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart,” who personified the woman as child—sweet, innocent virgin (for sure), but perky (neseli), bright, and charming, too. At the opposite pole there were several alternatives to Pickford. One was the woman of adventure and daring, personified by Pearl White, the Queen of American serials, beginning with The Perils of Pauline in 1914. White represented the woman less as suffering victim than as active challenger of villainy (alcaklik,hainlik). Another alternative was the more dignified (agir basil), controlled woman of grace and manners, represented by such stars as Gloria Swanson and Pauline Frederick—women who personified the era’s (devir) notions (kavram) of a true Lady.
5. The rebellious alternative to Pickford’s adolescent spunk was Clara Bow, the “It Girl,” and It, like jazz, was another of the important if vague (belirsiz) words that indicated the values of the decade. It was coined and popularized by British author Elinor Glyn in a series of books from Three Weeks (1907) to It (1927)—sexually scandalous bourgeois novels for women readers. It was a vague euphemism (ortmece) for sex (hence the deliberate irony of Cole Porter’s 1928 song hit, “Let’s Do It”) and implied a wide range of suggestions: sex appeal, sexual drive, the sex act itself, or a more general attitude toward that sexual activity. The girl, like Clara Bow, who had It exuded sexual energy and appeared as if she might welcome a sexual invitation (even if she coyly never accepted it). One could have It, want It, show It, or think about It, but not do It.
—from Mast and Kawin, A Short History of the Movies, 7th edition, 2000, pp. 138-141.

Joplin and Ragtime
1. The popular song was not invented in the United States, although American composers contributed their share of classic tunes and lyrics. The musical art forms that were invented in the United States are ragtime, jazz, and blues.
2. ’ dates back to the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, to a period when the legendary fortunes of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Goulds, and Astors were beginning to be amassed (biriktirmek) and when the American moneyed aristocracy, their acquaintances (tanidik), and all those who emulated (oykunmek) their Victorian manners were entertaining guests with salon orchestras playing stately waltzes. The aim was to establish European elegance across the Atlantic.
3. Some of the less privileged were eager to take advantage of the freedom to pursue upward mobility(improvement in the socioeconomic situation). They wanted to gain the social recognition already enjoyed by the wealthy families, and they wanted to show everyone that they were capable of creating elegance (zarafet) of their own. Ragtime emerged from the African-American community and its musical traditions, transformed by the influence of European styles. African-American musicians, who had at first to settle for jobs in saloons and brothels, wanted to do more than play the minstrel-show type music with which white audiences had come to identify them. Ragtime came along at just the right moment. The acknowledged master of the new genre was Scott Joplin (1868-1917), who began his career in backrooms and honky-tonks but was to become a national celebrity with the publication of “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899.
4. Joplin heard the original ragtime tunes frequently played by small African-American combos on the riverboats. They may have been variations on old plantation songs, minstrel-show cakewalks, and banjo melodies, and they were probably played at lively tempos. White audiences expected African-American music to be high-spirited. The label ragtime was coined to identify the syncopation that was the trademark of the new genre. Syncopation occurs when the melodic line of a piece is played against, not with, the accented beats of the rhythm accompaniment. Syncopated pieces are usually difficult to play because the left hand and the right hand are not in sync. (For a perfect example of syncopation, listen to George Gershwin’s “Fascinatin Rhythm.”)
5. Joplin would be captivated by the new sounds, but he wanted to turn them into a legitimate, recognized genre that would be associated with African-Americans but would also prove the equal of the “foreign imports.” This goal meant imitating or at least coming close to European rhythm. Joplin slowed down the pace to make the music even more stately. On the sheet music of his “rags” he would write: “Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast.”
—from Janaro and Altshuler, The Art of Being Human, 7th ed., New York: Pearson, 2003, pg 225-226.