Beloit College Publishes Mindset List for Class of 2009

The Kensington Review has an inveterate hatred of lists in the media. They usually exist to promote something in an intellectually facile way, jamming maximum nonsense into a minimum of space, and they get handed to a journalist short of copy as a deadline approaches. A glorious exception is the Beloit College Mindset List that comes out every autumn. It provides a snapshot of the world as seen by the 18-year-olds entering college as freshmen. To call it unsettling is to betray one’s age.

On the positive side, the Class of 2009 has always had a Hubble Telescope pointed at the edges of the universe. To them, black Americans have always been known as African-Americans (which may say more about progress in race relations in the last 50 years than anything else). Libraries have always had good computers and software. They don’t remember a time when Marcos ran the Philippines. And Iran and Iraq haven’t fought during their lifetimes. Heart-lung transplants have always been around. And few have had to learn to tie a necktie.

And on the downside, Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead, and Wayne Gretzky didn’t play for Edmonton while they were alive. The federal budget has always been more than $1 trillion a year. There have always been zebra mussels in the Great Lakes. They never saw a space shuttle called “Challenger” fly. Howard Johnson’s 28 ice cream flavors are unknown to them.

And some of the changes are just changes. Their world has always had snowboarding. The Louvre has always had a glass pyramid in front of it. “Les Miserables” has always been a musical. They missed American Motors, have no recollection of the Soviet Union nor of the oat bran diet. And “Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, has always been available in China.”

Times passes, and what was news to one generation is history to the next. Ideas change not because people change their minds, but because the young grow up in a world that is different from their parents’ and the old ideas based on older experiences pass away in time. There remains a longing for social justice, but there are damn few communists on left to argue that that is the way to get it. Humanity learns, sometimes. Still, they missed seeing Tom Landry coach the Dallas Cowboys – and that was beautiful. At the same time, they never saw the “Pat Sajak Show;” then, again, who did?


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