If you find this interesting, you might enjoy this old interview with the founder of the CLT, a competitor to the SAT that's intended to create incentives for schools to teach a more classical curriculum: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/philosophy-of/educating...
I'm both hopeful and skeptical about that kind of thing.
On one hand I think one of the smartest things you can do is look at things from the widest perspective in time and space (I told somebody once that "I'd like to be somebody that someone from 3000 years ago could understand")
On the other hand many of those programs are pushed by people who are closed minded.
When it comes to philosophy the likes of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates can still come across as really fresh. As much as you might hear about Euclid's Elements if you self-study math, I think Elements is a complete waste of time in 2024.
I made a journey from being an anime fan to a sinophile and lately I've been meditating on how the Asian collection at my Uni is one of the largest in the US but is dwarfed by the National Library of China. Important works are not in translation or the translations are poor. Books on Chinese mythology in English don't even agree on who the important figures are, it's like you get one book on the Greek myths that never mentions Hercules and another that mentions Apollo.
The more I learn about the sinosphere the more I realize just how ignorant I am. Western "Great Books" are great don't get me wrong but they only tell you part of the story.
