2025 RI Y6 GP Prelim P2 INSERT

Raffles Institution 2025 Year 6 Preliminary Examination General Certificate of Education Advanced Level Higher 1 GENERAL PAPER 8881/02 Paper 2 3 September 2025 INSERT 1 hour 30 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains the passages for comprehension. This document consists of 4 printed pages.

2 Passage 1. Julia Keller argues that giving up is not necessarily a bad thing. 1 How did the idea that perseverance is virtuous and quitting is sinful ever get its hooks in us? A major source, of course, is the nettlesome notion known as the Protestant1 work ethic. According to Adam Grant, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and author of many best-selling books on personal transformation, treating perseverance as a virtue is a relic of the Protestant Reformation —but it still remains an indelible part of the American dream that fails to keep pace with modern sentiments. 5 2 And not just the American one. Other nations, too, put perseverance on a pedestal. If it weren’t such an entrenched ideal, then the recent mini backlash against it wouldn’t be so newsworthy. As essayist Charlie Tyson notes, widely reported revolts against inhumane work ideals —from the ‘lying flat’ movement in China to outcries against deaths from overwork in Japan and South Korea—reflect a growing sense of indignation in Asian countries. He adds Sweden and Finland to the list of countries who report surpris ing numbers of workers suffering from job- induced burnout — surprising because for so long, people just didn’t quit, and the positive attributes of superhuman endurance were treated as truisms. 10 15 3 Recently, the notion of lying flat took a more vigorous turn. A new term has increasingly appeared on Chinese social media —runxue—which means the ‘study of run’, as in ‘running away’. Young Chinese workers are dispirited by the cocktail of Covid restrictions, highly competitive working environments and social pressures to get married and do well financially. Additionally, in a buzzed-about 2021 essay in the New York Times, Cassady Rosenblum chronicles her journey from radio producer operating in “the cacophony of the 24-hour news cycle” to serene porch sitter: “Work has become intolerable. Rest is resistance.” Quitters, it seems, are finally coming out of the closet. 20 25 4 Well, maybe. But it’s not that simple, of course. Because if perseverance didn’t still have such a powerful hold on our imaginations, we’d not be reading essays by people determined to reject it. Despite the temporary uptick in workers going absent without leave, the traditional lessons of grit still linger: Quit and y