Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2010 is Annual Hit

Although it’s closer to mid-terms than the start of classes, the Kensington Review is pleased to point out a few things from Beloit College’s Mindset List for the current crop of college freshmen, the Class of 2010. Presuming most are 18 or so, they were born in 1988. That gives them a much different starting place than those born at a more comfortable distance from the apocalypse.

According to the Wisconsin college, “The Beloit College Mindset List is used by educators and clergy and by the military and business in their efforts to connect with the new generation. Beloit creates the list to share with its faculty in anticipation of the first-year seminars and orientation.” Education is about explaining, as best one can, the world in which the kids find themselves, and in order to do that, one must understand what the student knows before one can build on that foundation. For those over 50, some things are memories; for the under 20s, those same things are history, and ancient history at that. For example, for this year’s class of freshmen:

• The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
• They have known only two presidents.
• For most of their lives, major US airlines have been bankrupt.
• There has always been only one Germany.
• A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.
• A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.
• They have never had to distinguish between the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams.
• DNA fingerprinting has always been admissible evidence in court.
• Mr. Rogers, not Walter Cronkite, has always been the most trusted man in America.
• ‘Google’ has always been a verb.
• Madden has always been a game, not a Superbowl-winning coach.
• They have rarely mailed anything using a stamp.
• They are not aware that ‘flock of seagulls hair’ has nothing to do with birds flying into it.
• Public school officials have always had the right to censor school newspapers.
• Disneyland has always been in Europe and Asia.
• They never saw Bernard Shaw on CNN.
• Television stations have never concluded the broadcast day with the national anthem..