I was teaching in 1988 and I remember the buzz going around. “Do you realize that the kids starting school this year will graduate [well, some of them anyway] in the year 2000!?” And by around 1995 or ‘96 it was, “There is very likely someone alive today that will still be alive in the 22nd century!” [I don't think it's going to be me....] About ten years ago I was chatting with two coworkers about where we were when the space shuttle Challenger blew up. I was teaching at a high school in Central Florida. One coworker was a junior in high school. The other coworker was in second grade. The milestones we use to mark our ages change just as much as if we were physically walking a path through the years. And those that joined our journey more recently will never have the same perspective on those milestones as we do.

But especially for those of us in education, it helps to remember that [for better or worse] today’s kids are not growing up in the same world we did. I teach technical drawing and I don’t remember the last time I had a student that said they had even heard the phrase, “Back to the old drawing board,” much less considered that that’s what we do in class….

Last week a colleague sent around an email that I have excerpted below. You can read about it on the Beloit College web site here and read the entire list for the class of 2011 here.

A note about the Beloit College Mindset List

To save readers the time and effort of writing to us about the Beloit College Mindset List, we offer four brief explanations.

The Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in the year that the entering first-year students were born.

Our effort is to identify a worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2007. We take a risk in some cases of making generalizations, particularly given that our students at Beloit College for instance come from every state and scores of nations.

The “Class of 2011″ refers to students entering college this year. They are generally 18 which suggests they were born in 1989.

The list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students as they commence higher education and is not meant to reflect on their preparatory education.

BELOIT COLLEGE’S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2011

What Berlin wall?
They never “rolled down” a car window.
Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
Pete Rose has never played baseball.
Rap music has always been mainstream.
“Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
They grew up in Wayne’s World.
They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
Fox has always been a major network.
They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.
Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
Most phone calls have never been private.
The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
They’re always texting 1 n other.
They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.
Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

There are many more if you follow the link above and I’m sure we can think of some that they did not include. [They have never "dialed" a telephone number comes immediately to mind. Kids these days! What are we going to do with them?] And before long, I’ll be getting students that have never known a world without a War on Terrorism….

Posted by Tim