You’re not getting older, the Mindset List is just getting newer
23 August, 2011
category: Education
Beloit College has once again released its annual Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall – the class of 2015.
Since 1998, the Beloit College Mindset List has been as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and it has since become a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation.
The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2015
-
Andre the Giant, River Phoenix, Frank Zappa, Arthur Ashe and the Commodore 64 have always been dead.
-
There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
-
Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
-
They “swipe” cards, not merchandise.
-
Their school’s “blackboards” have always been getting smarter.
-
American tax forms have always been available in Spanish.
-
Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
-
Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you’re talking about LeBron James.
-
Video games have always had ratings.
-
Music has always been available via free downloads.
-
Grown-ups have always been arguing about health care policy.
-
Sears has never sold anything out of a Big Book that could also serve as a doorstop.
-
Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road.
-
No state has ever failed to observe Martin Luther King Day.
-
While they’ve been playing outside, their parents have always worried about nasty new bugs borne by birds and mosquitoes.
-
Public schools have always made space available for advertising.
-
Their parents have always been able to create a will and other legal documents online.
-
They’ve always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe: Michael Who?
-
They’ve often broken up with their significant others via texting, Facebook, or MySpace.
-
They won’t go near a retailer that lacks a website.
-
Andy Warhol is a museum in Pittsburgh.
-
Refugees and prisoners have always been housed by the U.S. government at Guantanamo.
-
McDonalds coffee has always been just a little too hot to handle.
Beloit recently applied their popular format to 10 generations of Americans over 150 years in their new book, The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think Is Normal (Wiley and Sons.).