Governor DeSantis is unhappy with the College Board Because it had the nerve to disagree with him. He said he might find an alternative for the Board’s products, the SAT and AP courses. The Miami Herald says that the state is in discussions with a new test vendor whose was designed for Christian schools and home schools.
As Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders explore alternatives to the College Board’s AP classes and tests, top state officials have been meeting with the founder of an education testing company supporters say is focused on the “great classical and Christian tradition.”
The Classic Learning Test, founded in 2015, is used primarily by private schools and home-schooling families and is rooted in the classical education model, which focuses on the “centrality of the Western tradition.”
The founder of the company, Jeremy Tate, said the test is meant to be an alternative to the College Board-administered SAT exam, which he says has become “increasingly ideological” in part because it has “censored the entire Christian-Catholic intellectual tradition” and other “thinkers in the history of Western thought.”
As DeSantis’ feud with the College Board intensified this week, Tate had several meetings in Tallahassee with Ray Rodrigues, the state university system’s chancellor, and legislators to see if the state can more broadly offer the Classic Learning Test to college-bound Florida high school students.
“We’re thrilled they like what we’re doing,” Tate said. “We’re talking to people in the administration, again, really, almost every day right now.”
Will there be another test for students who are not Christian?
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article272526392.html#storylink=cpy
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OMG…DeSatan is NUTS.
Religion…the root of so many evils.
Sadly, Florida parents (and quite a few teachers) are mostly oblivious to what’s happening.
Someone should tell them that if they’re thinking about an ivy league school or a major, non-religious college for their child, they will be SOL.
Because the theocracy sure as hell won’t.
Most schools (even the Ivy’s) have ditched the SAT/AP/ACT for the next few years due to Covid disruption of education. I think many now realize that the scores mean nothing anyway and will continue to use “other measures” to “select” their students ……FAFSA/family income is the best indicator of purcha$ing a college education. Colleges are now nothing more than $$$$ making businesses.
Since much of the Civil Rights movement came from ministers in Christian tradition, since opposition to Apartheid originated partly in Tutu’s Christian mind, since the Wesleyan tradition is rooted in opposition to exploitation of coal miners in England, I find it interesting that “Christian education” can ignore all these things and celebrate European dominance and imperialism. Must be a different Christianity.
Good point, Roy.
We need FDR’s social gospel movement which promoted humanitarianism instead of the greed of libertarianism.
Good points, Roy.
Well said, Roy. Many Christian leaders were active in the abolition movement.
One more time, spot on, Roy. Religion played a big part in women’s suffrage too, among other things already mentioned. Progressive movements over the last couple centuries were often sparked in large part by great awakenings.
Although, White women engaged in the suffrage struggle shouldn’t have abandoned (betrayed?) Black women.
And, of course, religion played a big part in prohibition. That worked out well, huh?
Christian education could, of course, concentrate on its many “successes”: exterminating thousands and thousands and thousands of heretics over some 1,700 years (see, for example, what happened to the French Cathar city of Béziers); the Papal Bulls that granted ownership of non-Christian lands worldwide to European marauders and led to genocides, enslavement, rape, torture, and expropriation of resources worldwide, to the spilling of rivers of blood, culminating in all the horrors of European colonialism; the many Bible-based arguments in the American South for the institution of slavery, the subjugation of women for millennia, and so on.
But hey, it’s not convenient or “nice” to remember those things. A little remembrance of Bartolomé de las Casas is probably in order. And of the El Requerimiento. And of the speeches of Father Coughlin.
And so on ad nauseam.
I make a careful distinction between the teachings of this ancient rabbi, Yeshua of Nazareth, and the churches and religion created in what isn’t even, wasn’t even, his name.
The former–amazing. The latter–mostly abomination, with a few small rays of light few very short periods over hundreds and hundreds of years.
Bob-
Thanks for preventing the popular whitewashing of history.
I didn’t even mention, yet, the breathtaking toll in human satisfaction and flourishing taken by the Church’s opposition to sexual pleasure and experience, ESPECIALLY FOR WOMEN, over millennia. Twisted and evil. And this continues to this day, where in places like the rural American South, natural teenage rebellion against it and lack of proper education about it lead to epidemics of STDs and pregnancy and places like Nigeria and Uganda where opposition even to freaking birth control leads to unwanted pregnancies and opposition to gay and lesbian sex leads to lynching and other forms of murder by mobs.
Bob, you overlooked the barbaric practice of genital mutilation.
Indeed. One of the most horrific things I ever read was Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s memoir about this, Infidel.
And I haven’t even mentioned these various Christian churches’ opposition to free thought and science, which continues absolutely unabated in a steady line from the earliest persecutions of heretics in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD to idiot US congresspeople claiming, today, that global warming couldn’t be real because that’s not how God promised in the Bible that he would destroy the world next time and Governor Ron Ron declaring war on drag queens and states passing voucher laws so that kids can use taxpayer dollars to go to schools that teach that evolution is an evil idea and that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
The shade of Giordano Bruno, if there were such a thing, would look upon America today and so, things haven’t changed much.
Thanks, Christianity.
Religion is all about absolutist, prior limitations on the possibilities of thought. Mind-forged manacles.
Thinking in a religious context is like trying to do freestyle swimming in a suit of armor.
I just finished reading an article in the Washington Post as to what the Taliban has done to the education system in Afghan since their return to power. Now I read this about what DeSantis wants to do in Florida with CLT. If DeSantis has his way, CLT will not be alternative for colleges and university to use as an entrance exam. It will BE the entrance exam.
I see very little difference between DeSantis and the Taliban except in how they dress.
If DeSantis becomes president then I fear this country will become a theocracy and we all know where that leads.
Yup. The American Taliban
At what point will Florida Education become discredited along the lines of Bob Jones University and Liberty University? Most corporations that are successful ignore graduates from those schools. Public school districts across the country refuse to even interview candidates from Bob Jones. The education establishment in FLA needs to grow a spine, or they will lose their reputations.
Rhetorically, do the grads of Hillsdale and Florida’s Ave Maria suffer the same fate or are they immune because those schools are associated with conservative Catholics?
They are immune unless they get involved with liberation theology or the Maryknoll Sisters.
DeSantis’ latest feud with the College Board may lead to new potential conflicts. A test in the “great classical and Christian tradition” could be in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that prohibits the establishment of a state religion. Since the interpretation of the clause would likely depend on a DeSantis’ appointed judge, there is a possibility the DeSantis would prevail, particularly if they bring the case to Pensacola, which is often the plan, when they are looking for a right wing verdict. I also doubt the result would be any better at the Supreme Court where the Christian right justices are in the majority, but what I am thinking is certainly speculative.
I am sure “Justice” Alito can find some 14th century witchhunter quote that says it’s all good and totes constitutional.
No doubt. Such profound learning about and affinity for the Dark Ages and some very few centuries after that.
Alito, like Scalia, believes if everyone would just become true Christians, i.e., Catholics, his work would be done.
The Torah Test …
Peter, that’s a good idea!
Tradition!
That would be The Chosen Test.
lol
Not school choice or school choosin’; school Chosen.
After the wife of Lot, beloved of God, was turned into a pillar of salt for daring to look backward, God saw to it that things would turn out just fine for Lot because he was able to have children by
a. an angel
b. Lilith
c. a dust cloud
d. his daughters
His daughters, who got him drunk then raped him, because they were worried that they wouldn’t have children. Children were born, which is proof that God can redeem even the worst actions! The ends most certainly justify the means if you’re one of God’s chosen! Or something.
I’m going with “something”.
LOL, theta! Hilarious.
What did Moses say when he brought the tablets down from Sinai?
a. These things are heavy; couldn’t he just freaking invent paper already?
b. I don’t know; I’m kinda digging that women’s golden calves.
c. Thou shalt live in the basement of your father and mother until you are 30.
d. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I got him down to 10. The bad news is that adultery is still in.
cx: those women’s
The Torah, ofc, was written by Moses, or Moe, as his friends called him. In which book or books did Moses tell about his own death and the things that happened after that?
a. First Gefilte
b. Deuteronomy
c. The DaVinci Code
d. Genesis, Exodus, and Lascivious
❤
👍
Ofc, Moses needed a satchel to carry those heavy tablets down the mountain. So, that’s how he came to be known as Satchel-Moe, or Satchmo.
Thanks, Greg. ❤ me some Louie!
The name was actually given to Mr. Armstrong by a Jewish family back in New Orleans. And it was a Jewish guy who bought Armstrong his first horn. He had hired the young Louis to ride on his coal wagon through Storyville, the Red Light district, and blow a kazoo to let the working women know that the coal wagon was there. Louis had been eyeing a horn in a pawn shop window. This man sprang for the horn.
Imagine that! Being the guy who bought Louis Armstrong a horn!!!!!!!!!!
Ofc, Louis couldn’t afford teachers. So he taught himself, imitated the human voice. And in the process of doing this, he freaking invented swingtime.
Let me repeat that. This kid freaking invented swingtime.
It’s enough to make a believer outta me. Thank you, thank you, Jesus!
Great story about Louis Armstrong getting his first horn!
“Classical education” is a dog whistle that needs to be taken seriously.”
The chapters on King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Atlantis should be a hoot!
History Class
Now, boys and girls, back in the days of Uther Pendragon, . . .
It would help if I knew what this test involves. It is NOT helpful that I must subscribe to the Miami Herald to learn this. (And please don’t tell me to just “turn my ad blocker off”. Browsers routinely use ad blockers, and hunting them all down is in fact a lifetime’s work.)
Sorry for the rant.
Maybe you can get through to the coverage by “The Tampa Bay Times”? Best of luck. https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/02/17/desantis-classical-learning-test-college-board-ap-sat/?itm_source=parsely-api
Thanks!
If I may, I looked at the website, the sample test, and the technical report. Here is my (admittedly opinionated) take: https://grumpyoldteacher.com/2023/02/18/the-clt-exam/
I didn’t take the test, but I did look at what schools accept it. Actually, I looked at schools in the three states I have lived in the longest: Massachusetts, Illinois. and Colorado.
None were nonsectarian. All were Christian-run.
You couldn’t pay me enough to apply to any of them, let alone attend one.
Helpful take! Thanks.
And so the theocracy advances…
My mother and father, both devout Catholics, agreed when they married that their children could go to a good private school, as long as it wasn’t a Catholic school.
If I lived in Florida, and had kids, I’d move.
My wife and I are Catholic but in the last six years it has been hard to attend church. We have, in fact, stopped going because of the churches leadership support of Trump and others like him. We find it unacceptable to understand how people who claim to be good Christians can possibly remain members in good standing with any Christian church regardless of denomination.
We have three wonderful grown children who have high morals and ethical standards. We would have never put them in a Catholic school. Clearly, for us, it was the right decision.
As for living in Florida. I just do not understand how anyone with any sense of integrity, a clear sense of ethics, and common sense would remain in such a state.
I left the Catholic Church when I was 15 (and don’t ask when that was), but my mother remained faithful until her death. I have no problem with religion qua religion. I do have a problem with organized religion.
But when I think of forcing Florida students who wish to remain in Florida for college, to take this test, I have a pretty good idea where this will lead. It is where every organized religion which claims a monopoly on truth leads. To blood.
A church that spends its congregants’ money in successful attempts to deny rights to LGBTQ and women and, on attempts to usurp government functions in order to gain money plus the opportunity to dictate ruling policy for all, exist for one reason. Individuals in the church place a high priority on their own personal gains from religion. They care less, possibly minimally, about the harm caused to other people and to society’s advancement.
If they think about it at all.
What additional evidence is required before an influencer or a journalist writes, ” Privatization of schools is a power and money grab by the Catholic Church and its concubine, conservative Christian churches”?
Just one small entry in the huge repository of evidence can be found at the Iowa Starting Line site, “These Iowa Counties Would Receive the Most in Voucher Money,” 1-20-23.
Worth reading at a site called, Charisma, “A Classic Pentecostal Encounters Charismatic Catholics,” by Doug Wear who is possibly the same Doug Wear indicted with Jesse Benton. Benton was convicted in 2022 for funneling a Russian’s money to Trump’s campaign. Wear died in 2021, a few months after the indictment.
In the article, written about the birth of Catholic Pentecostalism, the author cites the following quote, “We’re so glad that Catholics are becoming Christians.” Money in the coffers of Catholic and Christian organizations, students in the seats of their schools, their curriculum in classes advance the goal -unification of Christianity i.e. the conservative brand of it.
Correction – Doug Wead
“Tate had several meetings in Tallahassee with Ray Rodrigues, the state university system’s chancellor, and legislators to see if the state can more broadly offer the Classic Learning Test to college-bound Florida high school students. ”
Why not talk to profs and students, instead? Chancellors and other high public school admins are appointed by the state’s governor or other politicians, hence they do not represent higher ed in any way.
exactly
Ronnie isn’t going to do that, because it would necessitate stepping outside of his echo chamber and hearing things contrary to his belief system. He’s on a crusade to take Florida education back to the dark ages, and he considers most college professors to be members of the deep state whose only mission is to indoctrinate students into a “WOKE liberal army” or something. I have no idea how to relate to someone who is happy to stomp all over the First Amendment (see how he has “punished” Disney and their corporate personhood for expressing opinions contrary to his agenda) or who sees a “woke” conspirator under every bed. Much like Trump, he refuses to denounce anyone who might be his potential voter, such as the folks wearing swastikas on street corners protesting Jews being allowed to breathe and exist here in Florida. He doesn’t want an educated populace because they use critical thinking skills to pick apart his actions and proclamations. Independent thinkers are the enemy of his brand of politics. If he controls education, he can do his own type of indoctrination. It’s downright frightening to live in Florida right now.
Mike,
I agree. One of my brothers lives in Florida and he told me it feels like Germany must have felt in the early 1930s.
We wud be heppy to except this here test at Bob ‘n’ Darlene’s Real Good Flo-uh-duh Universitee! Or you cud jist send along a little sumpin sumpin in addishun to the ushual inrollmint fee in a plane braun invelop adressed to yore’s truely! So, too differnt approches. Your choice!
Bob ‘n’ Darlene’s Real Good Flo-uh-duh Universitee. Whar Ron and Jesus is kinG!
Ron. He puts the floor in Flor-uh-duh.
Religion is handy if you need to keep a bunch of unwashed heathens in line.
At least that was what I learned in AP history.
Exactly
Especially monotheistic ones. The administrative center, with its rulers, priests, warriors, temples, ziggurats, and granaries for storing taxes and tributes.
Been that way since the invention of the city–the Fascists and the Priests, hand in hand.
Okey dokey, that’s just fine, Governor DeSantis. Have fun looking for a good standardized test. I’ll hazard a guess that the Christian Learning Test is just as accurate and meaningful as the SAT, that is to say inaccurate and not meaningful. Standardized tests scored not by the teachers teaching the students are all created equal — equally misleading and damaging in their volatility and inaccuracy. Standardization is big business, not education. You can take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the Christian Learning Test, or the Acid Test. Have fun hallucinating outcomes in any case!
“Have fun looking for a good standardized test.”
Talk about a search for the Holy Grail. . . .