Beloit College's annual "Mindset List" is out, just in time for the start of classes. As I pointed out last year, they are recycling old material. So far, at least three (I quit counting) of the eleven installments make reference to Johnny Carson (or Ed McMahon). Looks like one of the list creators was a real Tonight Show fan. There are always some Cold War references too.
Over the years, the list has become rather formulaic: _____________ (person, place, or thing) have/has always/never _______________ (something that it wasn't/was prior to the year they were born).
Example from this year's list:
Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.
I'm not sure all of them know who Wayne Newton is. I'll find out next week and report back.
In addition to that formula, there are also the obligatory references to movies and television shows that came out the year they were born.
This year's list is of some interest to me as I graduated from high school and started college in 1990, the year that many of this year's freshmen were born. The Beloit list mentions that for this year's freshmen, Stevie Ray Vaughn has always been dead. Indeed. He died in a helicopter crash on August 27, 1990. This was the subject of some sorrowful discussion among us 18-year-olds during my own freshman orientation.
While the list does invoke nostalgia, the focus on the year of birth for this year's freshman is too limiting (and was not the way the list began). As we begin classes, it is useful to think about changes in pop culture and the differences between the way the generations see the world. It will be a few years before Beloit's list references 9/11, but this year's freshman class was entering 6th grade in 2001. They were 11 years old. They have very little (if any) meaningful memory of the way the world was geopolitically before 9/11.
Only 8 more years until they can tell the incoming freshmen that Beloit College has always been publishing the Mindset List.
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