History Starts Today!
we’ve spawned aliens!
In order “to remind teachers that cultural references familiar to them might draw blank stares from college freshmen born mostly in 1992,” Beloit College has come out with its annual Mindset List.
Isn’t a large part of a college prof’s task to orient students to their own culture so that they might comprehend the cultural references of their own age, not to mention those of Shakespeare, Mills, Niche, and Pliny the Elder?
No? oh… silly me.
Well, dumb-down your conversation to include these ignorances:
Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014 excerpted
Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
Al Gore has always been animated.
Los Angelinos have always been trying to get along.
Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director
Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech. [erm… whaaa???]
They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
Beethoven has always been a dog.
They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.
“Isn’t a large part of a college prof’s task to orient students to their own culture...”
Only partly. Mostly, it’s parents and kinfolk - the way it’s been for the last 10,000 years.
Unfortunately, today’s kinfolk seem as clueless as unripe avocados as far as culture goes.
Add another one: “clockwise is this way, dummy”.
A few more: Audie Murphy was a pretty good actor. Somebody once heard that there was this guy named Sergeant York. We think he was a Mountie. (A Mountie is not a breed of dog.)
Whever you hear the “William Tell Overture”, do you
(a) think of Sgt Preston of the Yukon
(b) ask, “Is that music?”Posted by ZZMike on 08/18/10 at 02:52 PM
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