"History" and the class of 2012

With every passing year, the distance between freshmen and faculty like me widens even more. I used to joke about how we don't manufacture VCRs anymore; that joke ended a few years ago. Then I moved on to DVD players, which was even more short-lived as a joke. It helps, therefore, to be reminded of how different the context is for incoming freshman students. And that is what the Beloit College Mindset List does:

This month, almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace. However, the mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.
....The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are “wired” and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.
It is a multicultural, politically correct and “green” generation that has hardly noticed the threats to their privacy and has never feared the Russians and the Warsaw Pact.

There is a chance that most of the items on the list will sound bizarre and ancient to students--almost a historical time capsule--while to us faculty it was, well, our life :-)