Opinion | How the new SAT test will instil US values into impressionable young Chinese minds

By now, most people know that the SAT, the test for US university admissions, is changing. There will be a longer essay and a new scoring system. What they don't know is that the new test, with its heavy emphasis on knowledge of the country's founding documents and civil liberties, has the potential to change the mindset and world view of an entire generation of Chinese youth.

Until now, American culture has been largely exported through Hollywood. And until now, the SAT has largely been a predictable and monotonous examination full of tricky words like "legerdemain" and "ignominious". Its "crammability" led to its popularity in this part of the world. Every year, tens of thousands of mainland students flock to Hong Kong to sit the SAT. Last year, China sent about a quarter of a million students to study in the US.

I've been teaching the SAT exam for nearly 10 years. Those of us in the Asian SAT test prep industry understand that perfect scores are no indicator of future academic or workplace success. They're an indicator of a willingness to memorise.

All that's about to change.

From 2016, every SAT will include passages from the founding documents, including the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Further reading will come from the texts inspired by these documents, such as Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, works by Henry David Thoreau, and essays by Elizabeth Cady Stanton on women's suffrage.

Ask your typical Chinese kid today about voting rights and they'll draw a blank. To do well on the new SAT, Chinese students will need to cover the breadth of these foreign issues and philosophies, from American political parties and individual civil liberties to protecting the individual against potential abuses of power by the state. How, exactly, does the average Chinese student cram for that?