The Spirituality of Standardized Tests
Today every Martin Saints student took a standardized test, the Classic Learning Test. The “CLT” is a new kid on the block, a rival to the more familiar SAT.
Both tests are necessary hassles – hurdles and hoops to measure academic progress – but the CLT does a better job rebelling against the mediocrity in our nation’s educational machine.
Consider that the SAT is the gateway to the competitive college system. The SAT intends to assess “career-ready content and skills.” The SAT is a utilitarian right of passage. SAT culture is about getting into college and getting a job.
The SAT also submits to political constraints. In a multicultural society, it's based on reading material that is sufficiently beige such that nobody is offended.
The CLT rebels against these dehumanizing forces. The CLT also measures aptitude – college and career skills matter - but without the fear, status anxiety, and pretense of political neutrality.
The CLT holds itself accountable to a broader and higher vision of education, committed to western civilization and the pursuit of truth, beauty, and virtue. The CLT is the better option for schools that want to create citizens, not consumers.
Jeremy Tate, who founded the CLT in 2015, describes the CLT difference this way: "The CLT partly tests for aptitude: it uses a format of word analogies, reading comprehension, and so on, which are the established materials for an aptitude test, and it is keyed to a level of rigor that democratically and fairly tests for individual excellence. But it also tests for content—in this case, the content taught in classical schools and home schools that is absent both from our public schools and from rival assessment exams. The CLT assesses the subjects taught to many of the brightest high school students in America—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy to begin with, and then ethics, philosophy, theology, rhetoric, and logic. The CLT is both fair and liberating to a homeschool family that teaches Aristotelian logic and its development in Thomistic philosophy, or to a private school that dives into a deep study of Dante’s Divine Comedy. These schools, these parents, and these millions of students will be assessed rigorously for aptitude and content that fits their preferred education—and not forced to study to the mediocre standard of the public schools."
In fact, Martin Saints offers a modest amount of SAT coaching. Many of our students need to take this test; some colleges require it, and there can be scholarships at stake. We have to live in the world. We have to pay taxes too, and render unto Caesar.
But it should be clear why we emphasize the CLT. The CLT at least intends the right kind of excellence, creating a rival test infrastructure with room for a more humane and Christian vision of education. The CLT concedes that quantitative testing has to happen in this society, but it also insists that we are more than cogs in the machine.
After today’s testing, our students and teachers gathered outside for Liturgy of the Hours. I offered a homily reflecting on the spirituality of the CLT.
I told the students that at Martin Saints, we’re rebels pushing back against the “occupied” culture. American culture is occupied by fear. Anxiety, loneliness, and conspiracy theories are on the rise. Our system is rich with technology and distractions, but poor in virtue, community, and beauty. Our economy makes it hard to earn a living with dignity.
When we take standardized tests and explore colleges, we have to be careful and savvy, lest we get sucked into the utilitarian system, the culture of fear, status, and anxiety. We have to find a way to be in the world, but not owned by it.
Any Christian community worth its salt should be an organized rebellion against our occupied culture. St. Paul says that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.”
Martin Saints is a rebellion against cookie-cutter answers to life. Martin Saints is an oasis, a place where we can ask deep questions and wrestle with big ideas, where we can worship God and support each other as we try and forge more humane ways of living.
We’ll pay obeisance to the system’s necessities when we must – our students will slay a standardized test when they have to – but we’ll push back by choosing a better kind of standardized test when we can.
Martin Saints graduates will be little platoons of guerrilla warriors, the right kind of rebels behind enemy lines. Martin saints graduates will be missionaries, carrying rumors of light and goodness into a world that desperately needs the news.
Martin Saints is graduating its first class of seniors on June 4th, so please stay tuned. There is more news to come from this young little school, more news to come from our rebellion against the machine.
