Most young Americans entering university this year
can't write in cursive, think email is too slow, that Beethoven's a
dog and Michelangelo a computer virus, according to an annual list
compiled by two academics at a US college.
To students who will get their bachelor's degrees in 2014,
Czechoslovakia has never existed, Fergie is a pop singer, not a
duchess; Clint Eastwood is a sensitive movie director, not Dirty
Harry; and John McEnroe stars in TV ads, not on the tennis court,
Beloit College's "Mindset" list says.
The Mindset list was first compiled in 1998, for the class of
2002, by Beloit humanities professor Tom McBride and former public
affairs director Ron Nief.
It was intended as a reminder to faculty at the university that
references quickly become dated, but quickly evolved to become a
hugely popular annual list that gives a snapshot of how things have
changed, and chronicles key cultural and political events that have
shaped a generation.
In the first Mindset list, McBride and Nief found that
youngsters born in 1980 had ever known only one pope - Polish-born
John Paul II, who was elected to the papacy in 1978 and died in
2008.
For the class of 2003 -- born in 1981 and featured on the 1999
Mindset list -- Yugoslavia never existed and they were puzzled why
Solidarity was sometimes spelled with a capital S.
Solidarity with a capital S was the first and only independent
trade union in the Soviet bloc. It was created in 1980 and went on
to negotiate in 1989 a peaceful end to communism in Poland, making
the country the first to escape Moscow's grip.
Nief and McBride take a year to put the list together, gathering
outside contributions and poring over journals, literary works, and
the popular media from the year of the incoming university
students' birth.
"Then we present the ideas to every 18-year-old whose attention
we can get and we wait for the 'mindset moment' -- the blank stare
that comes back at you that makes you realize they have no idea
what you're talking about," Nief told AFP.
Those moments make it onto the list, alongside interesting
historical snippets like the fact that since the class of 2004 was
born in 1982, all but one national election in the United States
has had a candidate in it named George Bush.
The list also chronicles geopolitical changes, and sometimes
depressingly highlights how little progress has been made on key
issues, such as the fight against AIDS.
The class of 2004, for instance, "never referred to Russia and
China as 'the Reds'", and in the year they were born, 1982, "AIDS
was found to have killed 164 people and finding a cure for the new
disease was designated a 'top priority' for government-sponsored
research."
The class of 2005 -- born in 1983 -- thought of Sarajevo as a
war zone, not an Olympic host, and had no idea what carbon paper
was.
Apartheid never existed in South Africa for the class of 2006,
and for the class of 2007, "Banana Republic has always been a
store, not a puppet government in Latin America."
The list is a mirror of how rapidly perceptions can change: to
the class of 2013, boxer Mike Tyson was "always a felon" but to
students who graduated five years earlier, Tyson was "always a
contender."
The list makes some people feel old, like those who remember
what Michael Jackson looked like when he was singing in the Jackson
Five or recall the days when there were only a handful of channels
on television.
But they're not the only ones who get the blues over the
list.
"There are 25- and 26-year-olds that tell us they feel old when
they read the list," Nief said.
"Just two years ago, there were some students who learned to
type on a typewriter," but others in the graduating class of 2012
didn't know that IBM had ever made typewriters, said Nief.
Few students in the class of 2009 knew how to tie a tie and most
thought Iran and Iraq had never been at war with each other.
And for US students who got their bachelor's degrees this year,
Germany was never divided, professional athletes have always
competed in the Olympics, there have always been reality shows on
television and smoking has never been allowed on US airlines.
