In case you have yet to see.....
August 23, 2011
The Beloit College Mind-Set List Welcomes the 'Internet Class'
By Don Troop
As classes resume this fall, take a good look at
those first-year students armed with their
laptops, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones.
They are the first college freshmen to grow up
taking the word "online" for granted, say Ron
Nief and Tom McBride, the minds behind the annual
Beloit College Mind-Set List.
Mr. Nief, who was the college's longtime director
of public affairs and is now retired, wrote in an
e-mail on Monday that the Class of 2015 is "the
symbolic generational start of a revolutionary
adjustment in the systems and processes on which
so much of society is built today."
Most members of this year's freshman class were
born in 1993, the year Mosaic was introduced as
the first widely used Web browser, the
year Time magazine declared, "Suddenly the
Internet is the place to be," and the year The
New Yorker ran what is said to be its most
reproduced cartoon ever, the one with the
caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a
dog."
Mr. Nief and Mr. McBride, who is a professor of
English and the humanities,
have <http://chronicle.com/article/The-Minds-Behind-the-Mind-Set/123924/>compiled
the list since 1998, to help educators understand
the cultural touchstones that have shaped the
worldviews of each successive year of college
freshmen.
Members of the Class of 2015, the pair says,
"have come of age as women assumed command of
U.S. Navy ships, altar girls served routinely at
Catholic Mass, and when everything from parents
analyzing childhood maladies to their breaking up
with boyfriends and girlfriends, sometimes quite
publicly, have been accomplished on the Internet."
July marked the release of the two men's first
book together, The Mindset Lists of American
History (John Wiley & Sons), which demonstrates
how historical events have affected the mind-sets
of each successive generation of Americans since
1880.
Following is this year's full list, which can be
found online
at <http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/>http://www.beloit.edu/mindset.
Andre the Giant, River Phoenix, Frank Zappa,
Arthur Ashe, and the Commodore 64 have always
been dead.
Their classmates could include Taylor Momsen,
Angus Jones, Howard Stern's daughter Ashley, and
the Dilley Sextuplets.
1. There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
2. Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
3. States and Velcro parents have always required
that they wear their bike helmets.
4. The only significant labor disputes in their
lifetimes have been in major-league sports.
5. There have always been at least two women on
the Supreme Court, and women have always
commanded some U.S. Navy ships.
6. They "swipe" cards, not merchandise.
7. As the students have grown up on Web sites and
cellphones, adult experts have constantly fretted
about their alleged deficits of empathy and
concentration.
8. Their schools' "blackboards" have always been getting smarter.
9. "Don't touch that dial!" ... What dial?
10. American tax forms have always been available in Spanish.
11. More Americans have always traveled to Latin America than to Europe.
12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
13. Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you're talking about LeBron James.
14. All their lives, Whitney Houston has always
been declaring, "I Will Always Love You."
15. O.J. Simpson has always been looking for the
killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
16. Women have never been too old to have children.
17. Japan has always been importing rice.
18. Jim Carrey has always been bigger than a pet detective.
19. We have never asked, and they have never had to tell.
20. Life has always been like a box of chocolates.
21. They've always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.
22. John Wayne Bobbitt has always slept with one eye open.
23. There has never been an official Communist Party in Russia.
24. "Yadda, yadda, yadda" has always come in handy to make long stories short.
25. Video games have always had ratings.
26. Chicken soup has always been soul food.
27. The Rocky Horror Picture Show has always been available on TV.
28. Jimmy Carter has always been a smiling
elderly man who shows up on TV to promote fair
elections and disaster relief.
29. Arnold Palmer has always been a drink.
30. Dial-up is soooooooooo last century!
31. Women have always been kissing women on television.
32. Their older siblings have told them about the
days when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and
Christina Aguilera were Mouseketeers.
33. Faux Christmas trees have always outsold real ones.
34. They've always been able to dismiss boring
old ideas with "Been there, done that, gotten the
T-shirt."
35. The bloody conflict between the government
and a religious cult has always made Waco sound a
little wacko.
36. Unlike their older siblings, they spent
bedtime on their backs until they learned to roll
over.
37. Music has always been available via free downloads.
38. Grown-ups have always been arguing about health-care policy.
39. Moderate amounts of red wine and baby aspirin
have always been thought good for the heart.
40. Sears has never sold anything out of a "Big
Book" that could also serve as a doorstop.
41. The United States has always been shedding fur.
42. Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road.
43. No longer known for just gambling and quickie
divorces, Nevada has always been one of the
fastest-growing states in the Union.
44. They're the first generation to grow up
hearing about the dangerous overuse of
antibiotics.
45. They pressured their parents to take them to
Taco Bell or Burger King to get free pogs.
46. Russian courts have always had juries.
47. No state has ever failed to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
48. While they've been playing outside, their
parents have always worried about nasty new bugs
borne by birds and mosquitoes.
49. Public schools have always made space available for advertising.
50. Some of them have been inspired to actually
cook by watching the Food Channel.
51. Fidel Castro's daughter and granddaughter
have always lived in the United States.
52. Their parents have always been able to create
a will and other legal documents online.
53. Charter schools have always been an alternative.
54. They've grown up with George Stephanopoulos
as the Dick Clark of political analysts.
55. New kids have always been known as NKOTB.
56. They've always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe; Michael Who?
57. They've broken up with significant others via
texting, Facebook, or MySpace.
58. Their parents sort of remember Woolworths as
this store that used to be downtown.
59. Kim Jong-il has always been bluffing, but the
West has always had to take him seriously.
60. Frasier, Sam, Woody, and Rebecca have never
cheerfully frequented a bar in Boston during
prime time.
61. Major League Baseball has never had fewer
than three divisions and never lacked a wild-card
entry in the playoffs.
62. Nurses have always been in short supply.
63. They won't go near a retailer that lacks a Web site.
64. Altar girls have never been a big deal.
65. When they were 3, their parents may have
battled other parents in toy stores to buy them a
Tickle Me Elmo while they lasted.
66. It seems the United States has always been
looking for an acceptable means of capital
execution.
67. Folks in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have
always been able to energize with Pepsi-Cola.
68. Andy Warhol is a museum in Pittsburgh.
69. They've grown up hearing about suspiciously vanishing frogs.
70. They've always had the privilege of talking with a chatterbot.
71. Refugees and prisoners have always been
housed by the U.S. government at Guantánamo.
72. Women have always been Venusians; men, Martians.
73. McDonald's coffee has always been just a little too hot to handle.
74. "PC" has come to mean personal computer, not political correctness.
75. The New York Times and The Boston Globe have never been rival newspapers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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