With most college graduations under way, this is a good time to look at next year’s class – the college class of 2014. Older folks like me like to sit around and remind the younger generation that they have it easy. But that’s not quite true because the world they grew up in is different from the one I grew up with.
Beloit College, a liberal arts and science college founded in 1846 on the Wisconsin frontier, created the “Mindset List” in 1998. It was initially intended to remind faculty to “watch their references” during their lectures. The List provides a good marker as to the separation of knowledge that occurs yearly.
The List referring to the 2014 graduating class (those most likely born in 1992) is pretty interesting. For example, for the class of 2014:
- Bert Parks (There she is Miss America) and Tony Perkins (Psycho) have always been dead.
- John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
- Reggie Jackson has always been in the Hall of Fame.
- Speaking of baseball, Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Baseball.
- Czechoslovakia has never existed.
The rest of the 2014 list is here. All of the Lists (classes 2002-2016) can be found here.
The challenges of the class of 2014 will be the same and yet different than the challenges my high school (or even college) class faced. The class of 2014 will have different tools (and a different knowledge set) to meet these challenges, but they will meet them nevertheless because that’s what we’ve always done as a nation. The class of 2014 will be no different.