EDITORS' CORNER
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says CLT is ‘gold standard’ for military admissions
More university admissions offices are now accepting an alternative to the SAT and ACT that focuses on classical philosophy and literature.
It’s called the Classic Learning Test, and it’s based on “the most influential texts that have driven the development of society and culture and history for more than 2,000 years,” founder Jeremy Tate told Inside Higher Ed recently.
The U.S. Service Academies just began accepting the test for class of 2027 applicants this winter, joining higher education institutions in Florida and several other states.
It’s the fulfillment of a promise U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made last May.
“The CLT is the gold standard, and our academies need to attract the very best,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on X.
Florida was the first state to accept the test in admissions to its public universities, The College Fix previously reported:
The CLT is an alternative college entrance exam and college preparatory exam founded in 2015, according to its website. It tests students in verbal reasoning, grammar writing and quantitative reasoning.
However, the CLT “feature[s] beautiful and meaningful content in addition to assessing timeless academic skills,” its website stated. Its content includes Western authors and texts “that have most meaningfully shaped our culture for the past two millennia.”
Those authors include Homer, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Marx and Freud.
Since 2023, several other states have followed Florida in accepting the test at their public higher education institutions, according to Inside Higher Ed:
Arkansas and Oklahoma have followed suit, allowing submission of the CLT for admission to their public institutions, and students in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming can submit CLT scores for state merit scholarships. In addition, the University of North Carolina System recently began accepting CLT scores for students who meet a GPA threshold. The test has also become a darling of the conservative right, whose members argue that it is more rigorous than its competitors and can “restore merit” in higher education.
Writing at The Federalist this week, author Brooke Brandtjen said the CLT is gaining popularity because others have gone “woke.”
The College Board’s AP tests, for example, have become “increasingly leftist over time,” she wrote, continuing:
For example, AP U.S. history classes in areas such as Jefferson County, Colorado, have been accused of promoting identity politics, downplaying the value of the American founding, and “encouraged … disregard for the law.” Teachers have been repeatedly accused of focusing on race, gender, and social movements, leading to an ideological tilt in the classroom.
CLT is attempting to end the partisan paradigm. The purpose of K-12 education has never been to indoctrinate students, despite academia’s increasing efforts. Rather, the purpose of primary education was to develop citizens who were capable of free thought. This has been evident since America’s founding, as in 1780 Johns Adams wrote that “wisdom and knowledge . . . diffused generally among the body of the people [are] necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties.”
The test’s founder, Jeremy Tate created it, in part, because of the SAT’s decision to align with Common Core.
He told The Fix in 2017 that the SAT and ACT’s promotion of globalization has eroded loyalty to any particular cultural or intellectual tradition. The CLT counters that.
“We believe as citizens to the West, our students would be good to have the kind of literature that my grandpa and great-grandpa grew up on, and that was kind of common knowledge. I think we’re losing that,” he said.
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