ARTICLE: Annual “What Freshmen Know” Lists
From InsideHigherEd.com, the FREE web-based competitor to the Chronicle of Higher Education (founded by former Chronicle staffers and something I read every day - it also have a daily headlines e-mail list you can sign
up for)…
Beloit College has released its latest “Mindset List,” to help academics
understand what freshmen know — and what they don’t have a clue about. This
list has been prepared each August since 1998.
You have probably seen similar lists about young people these days… Our
youngest students, are, of course, just a touch older.
The full list is at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/23/frosh
Some of the ones that jumped out at me:
2. They have known only two presidents.
3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
6. There has always been only one Germany.
20. Text messaging is their e-mail.
22. Mr. Rogers, not Walter Cronkite, has always been the most trusted man in America.
24. Madden has always been a game, not a Super Bowl-winning coach.
And so on… I felt really old the other day, talking to a group of top high school journalists and no one among the 40 had even HEARD of Andy Warhol or the quote about “15 minutes of fame.” I was trying to tell them that “in the future, everyone will have 15 readers,” but that went right over their heads. Sigh.
- - -
A couple of reactions I got to this posting:
- Sree, the list has become interminable and full of junk, frankly. The ones you selected are worth pondering.
- A riot and scary. At least the list did not contain that they never get news
from newspapers.And one of my colleagues, Jen, pointed out this NYT story about a professor who went undercover as freshman: What a Professor Learned as an Undercover Freshman
-30-
