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Class of 2011--the cultural context
August 21, 2007

As it has each August for the last decade, Beloit College in Wisconsin released its latest Mindset List for the Class of 2011, a reminder of what cultural context means for the young adults with work with and love, for those who turn 18 in 2007.  (Also a reminder of how old I really am!)

The list is maintained by Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief.

Among the 70 interesting things to consider:

• They never “rolled down” a car window.
• Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
• They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
• Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
• They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
• 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.
• General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
• Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
• Pete Rose has never played baseball.
• Rap music has always been mainstream.
• Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
• They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
• Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
• 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.
• U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
• Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
• No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

Posted by Joyce Valenza on August 21, 2007 | Comments (0)