The Class of 2013

Each of the last several years, I’ve posted about the Beloit Mindset List, which is a subtle reminder to faculty that the students sitting in front of us have had very different experiences than our own. My own children now range in age from 25 to 30, so they are different enough from these new students that a trip to the Mindset website is illuminating.

The Class of 2013 or 01?

This time, just the “2013” hit me in the face. I will be 61 years old when this class graduates. I recall that as an elementary student practicing “borrow one” subtraction, I was given the task of figuring out how old I would be in the year 2000. The answer, 48, astonished me. Surely nobody ever lived to be that old! The other thing that came to mind, probably after watching movie trailers while awaiting Harry Potter, is that if the apocalypse 2012 people are correct, there will be no graduation at all. I refer, of course, to the end of a 5000 year cycle in the Mayan “Long Count” calendar, when the counter resets again to year zero. Although scholars discount the possibility that the Mayans even anticipated this, it is rather cool to note that on the Winter Solstice of 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years.

Okay, back to the Beloit list. Here are the top ten items:

1. For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
2. Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Kevorkian, and Mike Tyson have always been felons.
3. The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
5. Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
7. Earvin “Magic” Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
8. Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
9. They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
10. Rap music has always been main stream.

Sometimes, I think these lists reflect the people writing them rather than the students themselves. In #1, for instance, I’m pretty sure that Gene Roddenberry and Dr. Suess are the only recognizable names. Personally, I’m finding from the professor’s point of view that the use of texting and the internet is improving literacy, self-motivated learning, and critical thinking. On the down side, I find that many of these current students do not have a moral compass. A survey of high school seniors found that 30% had stolen something of value from a store, 60% had cheated on a major exam, but 90% believed they were a “good person.” Clearly, the message of separating a person’s value from his/her actions (love the child, not the behavior) has sunk in. But if you are not your actions, what are you? Was Hitler just a good person who did bad things? We live in interesting times.