Posted on 08/23/2006 3:08:55 PM PDT by Incorrigible
And more:
By DINESH RAMDE,
Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 23, 7:45 AM ET
BELOIT, Wis. - For most teens starting college this fall, disposable contact lenses have always been available, wars and revolutions have always been televised, and a stamp was rarely needed for communication.
Born in 1988, incoming freshmen grew up knowing only two presidents, searching for Waldo and eating dolphin-free canned tuna.
Those are some of the 75 cultural landmarks on the Beloit College Mindset List, an annual compilation that offers a glimpse of the world view through the eyes of each incoming class. The list was released Wednesday by this private school of 1,250 in this southern Wisconsin city.
"The list isn't looking strictly for chronological accuracy," said Ron Nief, the school's director of public affairs. "It's more about capturing cultural horizons and world views."
For example, item No. 2 says the class of 2010 has only known two presidents because the third, the elder George Bush, was voted out of office when they were only 4 years old, Nief said.
Billy Carter, Billy Martin and Lucille Ball all died before the incoming freshmen were born, according to the study's authors. But Julie Heney said she remembers the classic comedienne from imitating her in skits.
How did Heney, 18, learn about Ball?
"I googled her," said the Montpelier, Vt. native, confirming No. 19 on the Mindset list: "'Google' has always been a verb" for this generation.
Item No. 33 reflects a 1992 quote by black motorist Rodney King, who was beaten by four white officers. A jury's verdict acquitting the officers of the most serious charges spawned race riots and compelled King to issue a plea for peace.
The item reads: "They have no idea why we needed to ask, '... Can we all get along?'"
Mitchell Young, 18, of Highland Park, Ill., said the quote was familiar.
"I've heard it before. It sounds like a John Lennon thing," Young said.
The list gives faculty a better understanding of the cultural attitudes of the incoming class, said English professor Tom McBride, who helps Nief assemble the list.
"Once upon a time faculty could talk about the Watergate scandal. This reminds them that now they have to explain it first," McBride said.
Students didn't agree with all the items on the list, for example, that they grew up with reality-television shows and have always had access to their own credit cards.
"I think these things might apply to some people, but not to everyone, said Brigid Wold-Walsh, 18, from Seattle.
Nief acknowledged that most of the items are relevant to white middle-class America.
McBride said the lists, begun in 1998, often depress people who find themselves wondering how they got so old so fast.
"But it's an illusion. It's not them getting old, it's culture that changes so fast," he said. "Trends and fashions are so short-lived that a lot happens in just 18 years."
Generation Y bump!
They probably never saw a vinyl LP album, by 1988 cd's had pretty much replaced them.
Google's trademark lawyers are gonna get after them for that one...
I remember the first Gulf War, on the first night. By about midnight reports had stopped coming in but it was obvious we had air supremacy. When we went to bed I said to my wife: "We just had a war with thirty-something nations involved and the pivotal battle was fought, packaged, and delivered to our TVs between dinner and bedtime".
Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
My youngest calls LPs "those black CD things".
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would kick the Power Rangers @ss.
The Dukes of Hazzard had been off the air for two years when they were born.
They were born after Crocodile Dundee came out.
Ferris Bueller could have graduated high school, gotten married, and been their father.
They consider Lindsey Lohan an older woman.
They were born the year "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", "Big,", and "Ernest Saves Christmas" came out.
Hahahaha....one day we told our middle son that we used to own a black and white tv and he asked why we would want one of those? The whole notion of its existence was a foreign concept.
Go back a little further when 45's were the way 'kids bought music'.
That would be my parent's generation.
Should have told him, "So we can watch Casablanca, even though Ted turner screwed it up with color!"
52. They never played the game of state license plates in the car.
They got that one wrong, huh?
We just did that on our 9 state college scouting trip.
What schools are you considering?
My son is looking at Clemson, James Madison, Belmont Abbey, UNC Charlotte and UNC Wilmington. There were a lot more but after our trip he has whittled it down to those.
Did he look at Hampden Sydney? We're in NC and our son was looking in VA and NC also. He leaves today for his second year at HSC. He loves it there!
This is the one that bothers me the most. They are out of high school and have no idea what an achievement it was to see the Soviet Union come crumbling down. They have no concept of what it was to hear about people having to stand in line for toilet paper or walk into a market with lots of empty shelves or how one never trusted anyone because they could be turned into the watchers in the government for even thinking aloud what life must be like outside the Iron Curtain.
In september, 1989, when some of these kids were less than a year old, I went to Basic Training at Lackland AFB, and the halway in my flight's barracks had a mural on the wall of an F-16 flying through a Soviet flag, tearing it to shreds. The Wall came down while I was at tech school that November, and I watched the bombers get towed off the alert pad at Wurtsmith when Bush took them off alert.
I don't feel old, but I marvel at the fact that these glories of my youth probably mean little or nothing to these kids, and that was what I was hoping for the whole time. It is beautiful.
They never played the game of state license plates in the car.
Huh? Are they saying this because the kids all play gameboys and watch DVDs in the car, or because they license plates have changed so much?
My wife's collection of 45's amazed my kids...especially since they're about the size of a CD but only hold two songs.
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