The SAT Versus the Classic Learning Test

Commentary

Reading the SAT (Practice Test No. 10), I find myself learning about the obscure painter Jacob Lawrence, whose modernist paintings would be passed over by 99 percent of Americans as nothing more significant than a weird, high school art project. We are left to assume that Lawrence’s prominent location on the SAT is derived from the fact that he is an African American. But shouldn’t we be judging his paintings—to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr.—on the content of their character, not on the color of the painter’s skin?

The next question on the test I’m taking just happens to be about the first Hispanic woman to go to space. Why are these questions highlighting people we have probably never heard of? “These must be questions about art history, American history, or astronomy,” you might be thinking. No—these questions are testing ordinary vocabulary!

As the questions continue, we learn about “jazz tap dance” originating in African American communities (nothing mentioned about the Irish origins of tap dance, of course); we learn about Zora Neale Hurston, the African American and Caribbean folklorist; we learn about one of the few female pharaohs of ancient Egypt. And everything I’ve mentioned above occurs within the first eight questions of the SAT!

It is not that these people and this information are not interesting and relevant to students across America; but the way this information is being selectively used and other information is being selectively excluded strongly suggests that the SAT is pushing a severely skewed, nontraditional world view—a world view in which the fight for equality must be taken to irrational extremes; in which being a minority or a woman is itself some kind of great, noble virtue; in which the virtues of heroes who erected the largest pillars holding up human civilization are ignored; and in which spiritual and religious perspectives held by such heroes are marginalized or completely absent.

In the SAT’s defense, one may say that the College Board, which makes the test, is simply adopting the world view that is most widely present in college classrooms. The SAT does correlate with college success. This cannot be disputed; however, it is only half of the picture. This picture shows what happens after the test but selectively omits what comes before it.

The SAT is such an important test—taken by more than half of U.S. high school students—that it becomes a key determinant in what goes on in high school, middle school, and even elementary school classrooms.

Indeed, the College Board now has tiered SAT tests going all the way down to eighth grade. After working in a high school for more than 12 years, I’ve seen it firsthand. Teachers and academic administrators must consider academic goals and objectives, and inevitably these often hinge on how their students do on the SAT. Therefore, the amount of influence that the SAT exerts is huge. To put it simply, the SAT is caving in to the pressure of what is trendy in modern American college education at the expense of truly good education for our next generation.

Enter the CLT

This is where the Classic Learning Test (CLT) enters the picture. Founded in 2015 by Jeremy Tate as an alternative to the SAT, the CLT seeks to make education about learning built upon a classical foundation—the way that education has been done successfully for thousands of years. If the SAT measures its success in predicting how well students will fare in college, the CLT takes its most fundamental goal as helping students “become better human beings” more connected with “truth, goodness, and beauty.”

The latest version of the SAT, implemented in 2024, did away with long reading passages. The CLT returns to long passages and often draws them from more traditional sources, such as Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Plato’s “Republic,” and “The Analects of Confucius.” This, of course, encourages K–12 teachers to return to these rich and deeply rewarding texts in their teaching, pushing their students along the path of being a good person, with both knowledge and virtue.

More than 300 colleges and universities now accept the CLT, and it has been recognized by Florida and several other state governments. As of last month, U.S. service academies, such as West Point, have begun accepting test scores from the CLT. This is heartening news.

Making America’s No. 1 Test

Wishing to see the CLT continue to gain traction, I have two pieces of advice for the CLT’s makers.

First of all, you must seek to make the classics as accessible as possible, even to students who have not studied them. In the practice test I took on the CLT website, a passage from Dante’s “Divine Comedy” gave almost no introduction and erased the original poetic formatting and rhyme of Dante, creating a rather confusing passage that starts abruptly:

“All who in small ships have sailed, eager to follow us and listen on the adventurous track of my proud keel that singing cuts it way, return backward with speed and revisit your own shores. Do not put out to the open sea, where losing me, you might enter a deep, bewildering maze.” (H.F. Cary translation)

Now, what if we just added an introductory sentence, saying, “In the below passage the 14th century Italian epic poet Dante Alighieri describes being guided over a sea in Paradise (Heaven) by Beatrice,” and gave an English translation that mimics Dante’s original formatting and rhyme:

Oh you, who in some pretty little boat,
Eager to listen, have been following
Behind my ship, that singingly sails afloat,

Turn back to look again upon your shores;
Do not put out to sea, lest then perhaps,
You’ll lose me, and yourselves will be no more.

(adapted from the Longfellow translation)

These small accommodations create a bridge that all U.S. high school students can cross—not just those from classical education schools.

Second, I recommend that the CLT expand into classical Eastern civilization. Confucius is the only author from the Eastern philosophical tradition listed in the “Ancient” section of the CLT author bank and one of the few in the entire list. But, keep in mind that before the Industrial Revolution, China had the most advanced civilization for thousands of years. Therefore, it would make sense to include the work of the great Chinese historian Sima Qian (circa 2nd century B.C.), the writers of the Four Great Novels of China, and Tang Dynasty poetry.

Also in the Eastern tradition, the Japanese imperial regent Prince Shotoku wrote a 17-article constitution of profound moral impact. He was the first Buddhist ruler of Japan and comes from the same imperial bloodline as the current Japanese emperor. In ancient India, King Ashoka converted to Buddhism and carved his moral code into rocks and pillars. To this day, Ashoka’s law wheel is honored on India’s flag. Other seminal works of exceeding moral worth include Japan’s Samurai Code, the Bushido, and Korean King Wang Kon’s 10 Injunctions.

Works such as these create genuinely valuable diversity and show the universal spirit behind classic learning.

In these and in a more accommodating presentation of the classics lie the final components that I believe will make the CLT America’s No. 1 college entrance test in the very near future.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.