The Class of 2016 can barely remember a time before SpongeBob SquarePants.
Apparently, Beloit College puts out something every year called the “Mindset List,” which is basically a 75-item run-down of the cultural touchstones of the newest crop of college freshmen. According to the college’s website, it was “originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references” (yes to the Huffington Post, no to point-and-shoot cameras) but “quickly became an internationally monitored catalog of the changing worldview of each new college generation.” I’m skeptical that this specific bunch of bullet points is truly “internationally monitored” — it crossed my radar on the Washington Monthly’s education blog, and it looks more like Yahoo News fodder than anything else — but giving Beloit the benefit of the doubt, the Mindset List is a pretty sad standard by which to judge today’s 18-year-olds.
Perhaps it’s fitting that a list developed to help graying professors better relate to their students reads like a dispatch from a senior citizens center at which crotchety residents cluster on the sun patio to complain about “young whippersnappers” and advise darkly against trusting anyone under 30. The pablum in this year’s Mindset List really could apply to anyone under 30; it does less to describe a particular generation or capture a moment in time than to offer sweeping generalizations that have been true for the last ten years and will probably still be true in another ten. I’m a good decade removed from the teenagers Beloit attempts to characterize, yet many of the 75 items are as true for me as they will be for college freshmen this year, next year and the year after that. Beloit’s provides a helpful archive of Mindset Lists dating back to 2002, but it’s hard to see why — other than the free publicity — it bothers with an annual production. Some of the bullet points are already so vague and outdated that the 18-year-olds of Y2K would have found them to be old-school. If the list is an attempt to open a window into the granular details of life as a college student in 2012, it fails miserably; the faculty it purports to educate are not going to learn much of anything new. If entry #55 — “Mr. Burns has replaced J.R.Ewing as the most shot-at man on American television” — isn’t already obvious to the average professor (“Dallas” seemed as distant and old-school as “I Love Lucy” even when I was a kid), I have little hope that a mere list will enlighten him.
Some other notable fails:
#3 The Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them.
Ignorance of the Bible did not begin with the latest generation, and it certainly won’t end with it. Sixty percent of Americans can’t come up with even five of the Ten Commandments. Twelve percent of respondents to a Barna Research Group poll supposedly think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. (Or are they just being clever?) Adults have been bemoaning young people’s lack of knowledge of the classics since, well, classical times. Here’s Hesiod, in the 8th century B.C.: “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.” Why single out the Class of 2016 as the font of cultural illiteracy?
#16 Since they’ve been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16 cent rise in the price of a first class postage stamp.
Ironic, considering #17 could be, Their mothers still buy postage stamps, but they’ve never licked one themselves.
#22 The Real World has always stopped being polite and started getting real on MTV.
The Real World has been on TV since 1992 and stopped being cool around the time I began middle school. Today’s teenagers barely remember Paris Hilton’s sex tape, much less a time when reality TV was novel.
#28 Star Wars has always been just a film, not a defense strategy.
Reagan left office in 1989. If professors haven’t noticed this for the last twenty-three years, I hardly think they’re going to update their references for this one.
#35 Probably the most tribal generation in history, they despise being separated from contact with their similar-aged friends.
Now there’s a case of generational amnesia. Westside Story. Grease. American Graffiti. Teenagers are to groups what bacteria are to colonies. Always have been and always will be.
#50 L.L. Bean hunting shoes have always been known as just plain Bean Boots.
No one under 35 knows L.L. Bean hunting shoes as anything, because they’ve never worn or cared about L.L. Bean. Unless you’re teaching bow hunting or animal tracking, your students have not flipped through an L.L. Bean catalog since 1980.
The best item on the list is also the most unoriginal; it is lifted from an Internet meme done better by multiple people. Number 27: “Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for “save,” a telephone for “phone,” and a snail mail envelope for “mail” have oddly decorated their tablets and smart phone screens.”
This seems to be a rip-off of a much funnier list posted back in May on the “Computer Zen” blog of web developer Scott Hanselman: “The Floppy Disk Means Save, and 14 Other Old People Icons That Don’t Make Sense Anymore.”
Alongside this icon, Hanselman writes: “Save? Save where? You know, down there. Adding the Arrow to the 3.5″ floppy makes me smile. Is it pointing to under my desk?”
“Bookmarks: We used to use smaller flat dead trees to keep our place in between the dead trees we would read from so that we didn’t lose our page. No, books didn’t ‘keep our place when we turned them off.'”
On the Siri speech recognition icon: “If you don’t know who Johnny Carson is, how could you know that this is a old-style microphone?”
“I assume that the Voicemail icon is supposed to be evocative of reel to reel tapes but it always look like a container of 110 Film. I suspect my voicemail is no longer stored on spooled magnetic tape. No, you’ve never seen either of these before, young person. #getoffmylawn”
If the Mindset List suffers from being authored by a bunch of, uh, geezers, it’s fitting that some of the keenest insights into the classes of 2016 (and 2014, 2015 and so on) come from Buzzfeed, a kittens-and-celebrities website aimed squarely at youthful time-wasters. For a taste of the cultural milieu today’s 18-year-olds were raised in, the “37 Ways to Know You’re a 2000s Kid” slideshow has no equal. My generation’s counterpart — “25 Ways To Tell You’re a Kid of the ’90s” — makes for unparalleled nostalgia. Trapper Keepers? Check. AOL profile? Check. The clincher for me:
I had that white doggie notebook cover. And I loved it.
Beloit’s list may make middle-aged Ph.Ds feel ancient, but Buzzfeed does it for me. For capturing the cultural zeitgeist, it has no parallel. Ten minutes clicking through some of the site’s slideshows would do more for a clueless professor than any administration-approved Mindset List. The TV shows, music and catchphrases that define a “2000s kid” are a generational window. And “40 Things That Will Make You Feel Old” is enough to consign even me to a rocking chair. What shocked me the most (has it really been that long?!):
#34: Kids these days will have no idea what “rewinding” is.
#8: Macaulay Culkin is 30.
#20: The Rugrats’ ages today. [This one is particularly scary for a 27-year old.]
#38: The first commercial with the Taco Bell chihuahua aired 14 years ago. The chihuahua has been dead for 2 years.
Are your joints aching yet? Here’s a comforting thought, or perhaps a scary one: In fifty years, the Class of 2066 Mindset List will still be lamenting the ignorance of kids today. #21: They think SpongeBob SquarePants was George Washington’s favorite cartoon.
. . . So Well Read. . . 