--- title: The SATs Should Bring Back Analogies description: The SAT high schoolers have been doing lately is not the one you knew. Since 2005, the word analogies – like querulous is to complain... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7131543/vocabulary-is-to-obsolete-as-the-sats-should-bring-back-analogies/ author: John McWhorter article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-10-16T09:45:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T09:10:41.235Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The SATs Should Bring Back Analogies og:description: The SAT high schoolers have been doing lately is not the one you knew. Since 2005, the word analogies – like querulous is to complain... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7131543/vocabulary-is-to-obsolete-as-the-sats-should-bring-back-analogies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt19a321cc45b91a73/698a912ccabb1d2a9fe5a0ec/52298998-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: The Christian Science Monitor Archive og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The SATs Should Bring Back Analogies twitter:description: The SAT high schoolers have been doing lately is not the one you knew. Since 2005, the word analogies – like querulous is to complain... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt19a321cc45b91a73/698a912ccabb1d2a9fe5a0ec/52298998-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # The SATs Should Bring Back Analogies > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=ff1f6355-ee6d-4e1d-ba7d-ef146ce2bc2b&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) by [John McWhorter](https://time.com/author/john/) Oct 16, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  NEWTON - MARCH 3: Alexis Zelada works on a sample SAT during her Kaplan SAT Course in Newton, Massachusetts on March 3, 2005\. The class, taught at one of Kaplan's Test Prep and Admissions centers, helps prepare high school students for the SAT. (Photo by John Nordell/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images) NEWTON - MARCH 3: Alexis Zelada works on a sample SAT during her Kaplan SAT Course in Newton, Massachusetts on March 3, 2005\. The class, taught at one of Kaplan's Test Prep and Admissions centers, helps prepare high school students for the SAT. (Photo by John Nordell/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images) Getty Images—2005 The Christian Science Monitor by [John McWhorter](https://time.com/author/john/) Oct 16, 2013 9:45 AM UTC The SAT high schoolers have been doing lately is not the one you knew. Since 2005, the word analogies – like _querulous_ is to _complain_ as _deceitful_ is to _cheat_ — have been scrapped and students have been required to write an essay instead. Lots of people thought this meant having to show “real” language skills – no more of those “mechanical” analogies. Well, the verdict is in. It turns our that the essays measure nothing meaningful – or at best, they measure a student’s ability to “bullshit on demand” as [MIT’s Les Perelman puts it](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/10/sat%5Fessay%5Fsection%5Fproblems%5Fwith%5Fgrading%5Finstruction%5Fand%5Fprompts.html). Some of this may be that written work is simply incompatible to a standardized test where millions of people must get measured against each other. Evaluators are [encouraged](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/10/sat%5Fessay%5Fsection%5Fproblems%5Fwith%5Fgrading%5Finstruction%5Fand%5Fprompts.html) to take as little as two minutes to grade these essays. But that means students regularly get high scores for essays written with no regard for fact – who has time to check? – or that don’t even reflect anything they actually believe or feel. Plus they are told they should write with fancy words to look smart. Something is very wrong here. The SAT, created to identify quality of mind in students regardless of background, is now encouraging students to write in a fake and pretentious way. **(MORE**: [Why Are There No Summer SATs?](http://ideas.time.com/2012/06/15/why-a-summer-sat-test-makes-sense-for-over-stressed-students/)) There is, in fact, very little value in making students, or anybody, write an essay in under a half hour if the idea is to assess writing ability. The task corresponds to nothing almost anyone is ever asked to do in life. It’s like a driving test that requires jumping two rivers and stopping on a dime. Meanwhile, what would show an actual advanced mastery of language is those grand old analogies thrown out so confidently in 2005\. The movement against analogies started in 2001 with then-University of [California](http://topics.time.com/california/) President Richard Atkinson broadcasting his [dismay](http://www.ucop.edu/news/sat/speech.html) at seeing 12-year-old students being drilled in – gasp! – vocabulary. Since then, there has been a widespread movement, from elementary school up to college prep, that it’s backwards to teach students specific words. Many fourth and fifth grade classes have no spelling tests—instead, students are told to go find words they need to “work on. Someone who has refused this trend is William Dowling, a Rutgers University English professor who has argued that mastery of advanced vocabulary is vital to understanding the texts that college education presents students with. Back when the SAT still included the analogies, he found that the verbal portion of the test correlated quite well with the final grades of his students, and regardless of socioeconomic status. One actual SAT question at the time was “The traditional process of producing an [oil](http://topics.time.com/oil/) painting requires so many steps that it seems \_\_\_\_\_\_ to artists who prefer to work quickly. (A) provocative (B) consummate (C) interminable (D) facile (E) prolific.” The mastery of such words paves the way to reading serious prose, while the writing test paves the way to writing in a canned, formulaic style. It generates mediocrity not just in the present but the future. Since we have abandoned teaching them what words mean, once they get to college they will write in a hollow, semiliterate way, formally passable but mentally vacuous. At least they’ll get to do it slowly. **(MORE**: [Does Every Kid Need a “Passion”?](http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/02/does-every-kid-need-a-passion/)) Russian students are steeped in the rococo vocabulary of Pushkin. Orthodox Jewish men are trained in the subtleties of Biblical Hebrew words. Most of us would be baffled to watch students in, say, [Italy](http://topics.time.com/italy/) being taught formal words in their beautiful language and having someone stand by sneering at it as mechanical. Yet wise educators here in the US somehow see things differently. Our make-or-break-it tests must measure a student’s ability to write an elevated rendition of jabbering. 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