Beloit College’s Mindset List for the class of 2012
This year’s cohort was born in 1990. They never knew Ronald Reagan as President (which is why they spell the name “Regan”). None of them remembers George W. Bush or the Gulf War. They were only 8 when Bill and Monica made headlines, and just 10 when George H.W Bush emerged victorious from the debacle in Florida.
So if it seems as if they “haven’t got a clue” it’s because all they’ve learned of their immediate past was what they heard from adults or saw on TV or cobbled together in a hurry for a paper in High School.
And adults are still trying to make sense of the past! Some of my colleagues are still trying to come to terms with the fact that BOTH Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were elected President of the United States TWICE. All that heat and so little light makes their immediate past (or what we would call “the present”) an off-putting topic, something adults haven’t finished carrying on about, something that’s their problem, as in ‘that was when you were living your life, now I’m living mine’. So little wonder today’s teens think ‘Watergate’ was a movie, have never heard of Iran-Contra, and think ‘Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution’ were a grunge band!
It’s not that they’re so young, it’s that we’re so old! So have patience when you speak about that present. For your students, by definition, the decade before last is ancient history!