00:00:00:00 – 00:00:24:11
Speaker 1
Welcome to conversation, the podcast of Belmont Abbey College. My name is Doctor Thomas Farrah Cowley. I’m the interim dean of the Honors College at Belmont Abbey. And today, I’m delighted to be joined with Jeremy Tate, the CEO of the Classic Learning Test. Jeremy, it’s great to see you today.

00:00:24:12 – 00:00:34:01
Speaker 2
Hey, Thomas, great to be back at the Abbey. One of my favorite colleges. I am determined to get a kiddo here at some point. I love what the Abbey is doing. Thrilled to be with you.

00:00:34:04 – 00:00:41:02
Speaker 1
Thank you. Jeremy, please tell us about yourself. How did you come into the field of classical education?

00:00:41:05 – 00:01:03:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. Kind of stumbled into a back then and actually went to seminary to become a reformed Presbyterian pastor. And in seminary, through Chesterton and Peter created in Scotland. And a handful of others read my way into the Catholic Church. And in that process kind of discovered this tradition as well. But the other other thing that happened was that, conversion to Catholicism kind of derailed my career path.

00:01:03:14 – 00:01:15:06
Speaker 2
I was putting on being a pastor ended up getting into the world of SAT and Act prep instead. And I guess because of conversion, CRT also came to exist.

00:01:15:08 – 00:01:17:27
Speaker 1
Well, how did you start the Cl2?

00:01:18:00 – 00:01:40:13
Speaker 2
So CRT was also kind of by accident. It’s a funny story as it relates to the align with the Common Core standards back in 2015. And I really thought that I had a business idea and I told my wife about this. So my business idea was this was that everybody was upset that the city needed to align with the Common Core and the Dominican nuns, that I was working with them out at the Sales Academy.

00:01:40:15 – 00:01:57:04
Speaker 2
They were saying, we didn’t sign up for this. Where’s our test? So I thought, somebody’s got to be creating another option, a test that’s not Common Core aligned. So I was actually researching who who was making the test because I wanted to make a prep course for the new test. I came to find out that nobody was making the new test.

00:01:57:04 – 00:02:22:05
Speaker 2
And the people who were making it, I could tell they didn’t really know what they were doing, and so it seemed like there was an amazing opportunity. I was in the world of college counseling. I knew a lot of people in admissions and was able to say, hey, if there was a test, you know that look that reflected a tack or a Hillsdale or a Belmont Abbey education, would that be of interest to have that as an alternative to the SAT and Act for admissions?

00:02:22:11 – 00:02:30:29
Speaker 2
And the response was overwhelming. Yes. We would love it if there was something like that, but that’s never existed. And so we had kind of a proof of concept and went from there.

00:02:31:01 – 00:02:36:17
Speaker 1
So how does the CLT differ from the act or the act?

00:02:36:19 – 00:03:04:28
Speaker 2
Yeah. So the SAT has been around 20 minute standardized testing in some ways is the most boring and the most interesting subject. I think we could ever talk about the state. He’s been around since 1926, and for generations the SAT was an aptitude test. Meaning they would say, you can’t really study for this, right? They actually took the same mechanism they used for the Army Alpha in World War One, to basically figure out who is going to be in front lines and who’s going to be back in intelligence.

00:03:04:28 – 00:03:28:28
Speaker 2
Right? Well, the city was the only game in town. And after World War two in the GI Bill, and there was a huge surge of, people wanting to go to college. Colleges become very selective. And the mechanism to to sort them becomes the s.a.t. So in the 19, late 1940s, the SAT becomes a household name, and it doesn’t have any competitors until 1959, when the Act launches.

00:03:28:28 – 00:03:49:21
Speaker 2
So think about 59 year historian, Sputnik, the space race, all of this concerned about math and science falling behind the Soviets and the asset value proposition that it’s not fair to have an aptitude test. The kids should be tested on what they learn in the classroom, which sounds great until you stop and say, well, which classroom are we talking about?

00:03:49:24 – 00:04:13:20
Speaker 2
Are we talking about a montessori school, a Catholic school, a Christian school, a Jewish school, a public school? And it became very clear over time that it was a public school they were talking about. All right. And so we launched CLT in 2015 to compete with both. And what we did was that we realized that to some degree, the tests always impacts curriculum.

00:04:13:22 – 00:04:32:19
Speaker 2
We’re not even saying that’s a good thing. I think that’s debatable, right. But I would present it this way, Thomas, almost as a hypothetical. Right. If you imagine for a second what would American education be like today if everyone always knew that on the SAT and Act? That’s what you’re going to have to grapple with. Dante and Aristotle.

00:04:32:19 – 00:04:49:15
Speaker 2
All right, but atheist, maybe Catherine of Siena, Flannery O’Connor. If people knew that, it would change what happens in the classroom. And so that’s our hope with CLT to put the Catholic intellectual tradition front and center. And with that, you can even change K-12 education.

00:04:49:18 – 00:05:02:27
Speaker 1
That’s wonderful. So imagine a high school senior taking the class early in, the first semester of his senior year. What would the CLT look like to the student?

00:05:02:29 – 00:05:26:06
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, typically, mechanically, it’s pretty similar to an essay here. I asked him the CLT. There’s 120 questions to 120 minutes. It’s a shorter test. But, look, kids are bored out of their minds on the SAT. In fact, I’ve heard a number of students say you would never, ever read what’s on the S.A.T. or act unless you’re taking the SAT or Act.

00:05:26:08 – 00:05:48:16
Speaker 2
And they also have what are called the sensitivity committees, which I think started off with, well, good intentions. Right. And the idea there was like, look, let’s say a kid had something terrible happened, maybe an uncle committed suicide. You wouldn’t want to have a reading passage that references suicide because that could be triggering, upsetting. And so this started in standardized testing in the late 90s, but it got really out of control until today.

00:05:48:19 – 00:06:12:08
Speaker 2
The city and city have sensitivity committees where basically every passage is offensive for some reason to somebody. So what we’ve ended up with is this totally absurd scenario where on the most important test, kids are confronted with the most meaningless material imaginable. They’re reading about the processing of Greek yogurt. Right. About traffic patterns, a vacuum cleaner, manual. Right.

00:06:12:11 – 00:06:21:02
Speaker 2
Why not put students in front of the very best of what has been thought and said, and let them grapple with that instead? So that’s what students are going to encounter on the on the.

00:06:21:04 – 00:06:25:03
Speaker 1
Wonderful. How do you choose some of the readings?

00:06:25:06 – 00:06:44:07
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we have an author bank. We have a great board of academic advisors. Provost y hockey, is on that board of academic advisors and so two thirds of everything we put on the CLT comes from that author bank. And it’s it’s a lot of fun to bring these academics together and let them get in heated debates about who should be on that author bank and who should not.

00:06:44:09 – 00:06:57:14
Speaker 1
Wonderful. Well, this class is so wedded to classical education, and we’re experiencing this wonderful revival of classical education, in your view. What are some of the main drivers behind this renewal?

00:06:57:17 – 00:07:15:09
Speaker 2
It’s incredible what’s happening. You know, when when we started CLT in 2015, a lot of folks would say, well, what is a classical school? They never heard of that. And now everyone has some reference point. They go, oh, my niece is in a classical school. Or oh, my sister in law is home school, and they’re using a classical model and they’re doing Charlotte Mason.

00:07:15:09 – 00:07:35:22
Speaker 2
Right. And so this movement has burst onto the national stage now. And I don’t care who you are, right, left, center or whatever. Every parent wants this for their kids, right? Every parent wants their kid to go to school and come back with an enlarged sense of wonder, right? They want their kids to be nourished on great stories.

00:07:35:29 – 00:07:59:02
Speaker 2
They want them to be formed in the virtues, to come back more honest, not less honest. So I think that there’s a universal appeal with classical education. Everybody knows there’s been something really wrong in education. Something has been deeply amiss. And I think the classical education movement has been able to come in and kind of put its finger on it and say, this is what education always was and this is what it can be.

00:07:59:02 – 00:07:59:24
Speaker 2
Again.

00:07:59:27 – 00:08:13:03
Speaker 1
That’s great. Who is taking the class? Is it mostly students who come from classical education? Is there a rise in students from public school who are taking the class?

00:08:13:05 – 00:08:37:15
Speaker 2
So it’s kind of a funny story. For the first eight years, about 93% of the kids taking the class were either homeschooled Catholic school, their classical Christian school students, and some classical charter school students. Only about 6 or 7% public school students. A couple of years ago, as part of governor DeSantis bid for the white House, he got in a public feud with the College Board, threatening to kick the College Board out of the state of Florida.

00:08:37:17 – 00:09:00:00
Speaker 2
They didn’t go quite that far. But what they did do was they brought CLT in as an alternative. And with that, CLT, in a year, we went from 93%, outside of the public school system to 85% within the public school system. Wow. And so right now, we serve the majority Florida students, over 85% of all the students we work with now are Florida.

00:09:00:02 – 00:09:22:20
Speaker 2
And for them, it’s it’s high stakes. You get a 96 on the Seal team. You go to the Florida State or the University of Florida for free. But there’s kind of this funny dynamic where students are coming from a Florida district public school. They want to go to Florida State, and they’re stopping to take a test where they’re likely to encounter, you know, Aristotle or Chesterton, along the way, which is a lot of fun for us.

00:09:22:23 – 00:09:37:24
Speaker 1
That’s great. I wish I could take this test, but, I don’t need to. What are some of the most significant changes in implementing classical education in the coming decades?

00:09:37:26 – 00:09:54:28
Speaker 2
That’s a great question. Yeah, there’s a lot of pain point in the classical renewal movement. Belmont Abbey, the Honors College, the whole the whole college is solving one of these. And that’s the, you know, these schools are in real need, often have great teachers who can come in and pass along this great tradition to the next generation.

00:09:55:00 – 00:10:12:16
Speaker 2
So finding great teachers, but the colleges are starting to step up in a big way. And again, I think Belmont Abbey and others are leading that charge, especially again with the Honors College. But I think what it’s going to be is a matter of finding these pain points, around teaching shortages. Another painful we were just talking about here with this.

00:10:12:20 – 00:10:30:12
Speaker 2
The institute is, you know, retaining especially male teachers, you know, how do you do that when typically a classical school is only paying 20% of public school pay? So I think one of the things we need to get is a classical school growth fund in place. And I know some folks are working on that, as well.

00:10:30:12 – 00:10:49:17
Speaker 2
But this is now emerged. You know, I think it used to be public school or private school. I think the question in ten years is not going to be public or private. It’s going to be classical or kind of modern, secular, progressive, whatever they’re going to choose to call it. These are the two options. And there’s a number of ways you can receive this.

00:10:49:18 – 00:10:52:16
Speaker 2
If it’s in a Catholic school, a charter school, or a classical Christian.

00:10:52:16 – 00:10:58:19
Speaker 1
School, that’s wonderful. How do you think the clergy can support the broader classical movement?

00:10:58:22 – 00:11:16:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, we you know, we see ourselves as kind of a least common denominator where, you know, you may be doing Charlotte Mason, you may be doing homeschool, or you may be doing a Catholic school or Christian school, but you’re not doing the College board secular progressive thing. And so I think with that, we want to be kind of at least common denominator for the movement.

00:11:16:27 – 00:11:37:10
Speaker 2
Unintentionally, we’ve been able to bring folks together from within the movement, as well, to kind of cast a vision for how we go. And we believe this particular battle of trying to offer something, more compelling than the vision for education, that the College Board is offering, which is very impoverished, very utilitarian. Right.

00:11:37:12 – 00:11:57:21
Speaker 2
It’s just about college and career, you know, and, and I think one of the ironies in this movement is, you know, a great classical school. They never say that their, their, their reason for existing is to make students college ready or, or are career ready. But it’s a little known secret is that, of course, they make the very best college students.

00:11:57:23 – 00:12:05:22
Speaker 2
And they make the very best employees, right? Because their education was aimed at something so much beyond just a job.

00:12:05:24 – 00:12:09:11
Speaker 1
How many universities and colleges are now accepting the Seal team?

00:12:09:14 – 00:12:27:04
Speaker 2
We’re about 350, and we’re in legislation and, six states this year. Georgia, Tennessee, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Iowa. And so we we should be able to hopefully replicate what happened in Florida, this spring.

00:12:27:07 – 00:12:30:25
Speaker 1
Prior to the AP, I taught it six years at Texas State.

00:12:31:01 – 00:12:31:20
Speaker 2
Okay.

00:12:31:23 – 00:12:38:18
Speaker 1
And so I worked at a state school. What would be your pitch to a state school for them to accept the Seal team?

00:12:38:20 – 00:12:56:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s a it’s a great question. And great relationships. Now, know it’s wild to me to even even now to go to the website at Florida State or University of Florida and see CLT right there. I never thought that we would see that happen. But here’s the deal a college entrance exam has always been inherently also its own kind of enrollment engine.

00:12:57:00 – 00:13:20:20
Speaker 2
Right. And when the S.A.T. goes all into the stem and all of this, it’s a good thing for Virginia Tech, right? It may not be a great thing for Hillsdale, but if the gold standard for college entrance exams can become a test that reflects something like the Honors College at Belmont Abbey, right? There’s going to be a natural, natural kind of symbiosis connection point, you know, with that as well.

00:13:20:23 – 00:13:43:22
Speaker 2
Every school, you know, Texas State, you name it, they all want students coming out of the homeschool world, the classical charter school world, the Catholic school world. I mean, 20 years ago, colleges didn’t know what to do with homeschool student. Right now, they they’re fighting over homeschool students. I mean, these students are some of the most engaged in campus life, and they academically are at the top of their class.

00:13:43:25 – 00:13:55:12
Speaker 1
Wonderful. Well, looking ahead, what’s next for the CLT? Are there any plans for expanding its scope, including new subject areas or additional resources for students?

00:13:55:15 – 00:14:01:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think, next thing you know, we I grew up on the movie Braveheart. If you’re a fan, Thomas.

00:14:01:14 – 00:14:02:27
Speaker 1
It’s one of my favorite films.

00:14:03:03 – 00:14:20:02
Speaker 2
It’s so good. So there’s a great part right before the Battle of Stirling and William Wallace. You know, after giving this really inspirational speech, he starts to write off. And his friends is, where are you going? He says, I’m going to pick a fight, you know, and it’s kind of the mantra of CLT, we want to pick a fight with the educational establishment.

00:14:20:02 – 00:14:44:04
Speaker 2
You know, students have been robbed. They’ve been robbed of being exposed to the transcendental. They’ve been robbed of an education that’s worthy, of their dignity. And so we really want to challenge kind of the, the static, sterile, mainstream education establishment right now. And that starts with challenging the College Board. I mean, they are in every almost every school in the country, through a sat, sat.

00:14:44:08 – 00:14:52:10
Speaker 2
They have a huge impact and driving curriculum in a way that minimizes the contribution of the Western intellectual tradition. And the Catholic Church.

00:14:52:12 – 00:15:15:13
Speaker 1
Wonderful. Well, thank you for all that you’re doing, Jeremy. Thank you for watching this podcast. You can subscribe and tell your friends the conversation is available on Spotify, Apple and Google Podcasts. Until next time, God bless. Thank you.

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