Monthly Archives: August 2013

#19 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents’ screens grow ever larger. (Class of 2017, #12)

This item posits a generational gap—old people like big TVs, but young people like little TVs!—that is imaginary.

Smaller TV screens, on iPads, iPods, smartphones and the like, are popular—for younger people and older people. And so are big screen TVs.

The Class of 2017’s parents are buying bigger TVs because parents are usually the members of the family who buy family TVs. (They probably bought a lot of those small screens their kids use as well.)

It’s a problem when the self-designated experts in identifying generational divides don’t understand the difference between a generation gap and gap between what expenses parents and their children pay for.

 

Look at Who Else Is Bashing the Mindset List: Salon says “Beloit College is trolling us all”

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Daniel D’Addario has an insightful article up at Salon titled “Beloit College is Trolling Us All.”

Some highlights:

Over time, Beloit’s professors ran out of things like “the AIDS crisis” and delved deeper into arcana or just meaningless incidents; the list’s entries often read like the setup for an observation, one that the list-makers aren’t willing to make but are happy to imply. Here are the only types of entries on the mind-set list:

  1. [any celebrity or public figure] has always been [either dead or, more commonly, famous]
  2. [something completely random that one thinks about quite infrequently] has always been the case
  3. College freshmen have never seen [consumer product that is an easy punch line — think eight-track tapes, Betamax, etc.] OR have always been able to [thing you can do with technology]
  4. College freshmen have never known about or experienced [news event from the recent past that everyone — EVERYONE! — has heard of or experienced]
  5. Bad puns about technology…
Aside from the hackiness of the puns, the thing that jumps out is that the majority of these things governing a student’s “mind-set” are actually not that important. Does an incoming college freshman have any idea who Bill Maher is? Has a spray-paint ban in Chicago any connection to, well, anything other than aspiring Illinois graffiti artists? The list’s particular obsession with technology signifies both a nostalgia that’s deeply uninteresting (these kids with their iPads — things were so much simpler when we all played “Pong,” or better yet, stickball in the street!) and a willingness to make sweeping implications about the degree to which Technology Has Changed Everything that is many things, but is not academic.

Beloit Mindlessness Makes Inside Higher Ed

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Beloit Mindlessness is the focus of a story in today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Whose Mindset?”

Some highlights:

This year two anonymous professors — one from a large public university and the other from a community college — have declared their intent to destroy the list, which has been going strong since 1998. They are unveiling a site — Beloit Mindlessness— that is “dedicated to the mockery and eventual destruction of the Beloit mindset list.”…

The two professors specifically focus on the issue of relating everything to events that took place 18 years ago. “Each year’s list is constructed — and this point bears repeating over and over — by a couple guys going to a library and looking at microfiche of things that happened 18 years earlier,” Beloitmindlessness says. “Clearly this makes absolutely no sense. A person’s ‘mindset’ — their understanding of how the world works, their values and interests, and so on — tends to be shaped by things that happened to them once they developed an understanding of their social environment more sophisticated than a newborn’s. Things that happened ten or five or even one year earlier are going to be far more important to an 18-year-old than things than happened 18 years ago.”…

Asked why he would spend so much time on a site to take down the Mindset List, Disgruntled Professor said via e-mail: “It makes people in higher education look stupid. Students look stupid because they are portrayed as solipsistic idiots who don’t know anything about the world before they were born. It portrays professors as out-of-touch coots who use their class time to prattle on about who shot J.R., Madonna, the color of M&Ms and other trivia. It makes academic researchers look stupid because it is one of the most widely covered ‘reports’ on academic life — and it is of abysmal quality.”

And here is a response from Mindset co-creator Tom McBride:

Via e-mail, McBride said that he found the new site amusing, but that “the authors of the ‘mindless’ list are misreading the Mindset List. The point is not to portray today’s college students as lazy and solipsistic. On the contrary, we began our list 18 years ago because we were tired of other lists that did just that.”

I’ve read quite a bit about the creation of the Mindset list and this is the first time I’ve heard the claim that the list was made in response to even dumber and more condescending lists. I’d like to see an earlier version of this claim and an example of one of these other lists.

It’s hard to imagine anything more solipsistic than believing that your birthdate is the dividing line between “never” and “always”—which is how college students are portrayed in the Mindset List.

He added that the goals of the list include “to provide a concise overview of what has happened in the short lifetimes of entering college students — and to detail what has, in effect, always been ‘normal’ for them. It is not about their ignorance or navel-gazing or anything at all like that.” Further, McBride said he and Nief hoped “to spark intergenerational conversations within homes and classrooms” and “to remind teachers that some of their allusions and references are going to need a bit of explanation.”

The lists do not “provide a concise overview of what has happened in the short lifetimes of entering college students” because of their relentless focus on things that happened around the time of their birth.

McBride added: “Even sardonic parody is, perhaps, a perverse form of flattery. The verve of Beloit Mindlessness is itself ample testimony that students are very smart and industrious!”

Well, we’re actually professors, not college students, but that’s the level of accuracy we’ve come to expect from the Beloit Mindset List.

#18 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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There has never been a Barings Bank in England. (Class of 2017, #56)

An earlier post in our continuing series examining every item on the Beloit Mindset List was an overview of 20 items about things that happened outside the United States, most of which were clearly not “cultural touchstones” for 18-year-old Americans, including the presence of McDonald’s in China and Moscow, the availability of Pepsi in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and the Royal New Zealand Navy’s daily ration of rum.

I think we can safely agree that the non-existence of a British Bank is similarly of no significance for understanding the mindset of incoming U.S. college students.

#17 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Olestra has always had consumers worried about side effects. (Class of 2017, #53)

One of the problems with generating a list of “cultural touchstones” by looking at newspapers from 18 years ago is that they don’t tell you what will happen in the next 18 years.

Olestra is apparently still found in some foods, but it has not been a successful product.

According to a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

As of 2002, olestra is a moribund, if not totally dead, product. Procter and Gamble announced several years ago that it would not seek FDA approval to use olestra is products other than snack foods. In February 2002, P&G even sold its Cincinnati olestra factory to Twin Rivers Technologies of Quincy, Massachusetts, though P&G retained the Olean brand name. Finally, sales of Frito-Lay’s WOW chips and Fat-Free Pringles crisps have declined steadily. Sales of WOW have declined more than 60 percent since their peak.

That doesn’t seem like much of a “cultural touchstone.”

Center for Science in the Public Interest. “A Brief History of Olestra.”

 

Mindset List vs. Mindlessness List

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The Class of 2017 Mindset List has arrived and we’ll soon be scrutinizing its entries.

But first, we compare the Mindset List to our own Mindlessness List.

We generated our list using by copying the Mindlist’s method:

 Our list was compiled by a couple of guys without any assistance from or contact with anyone from the Class of 2017. Although we didn’t use microfiche, we did pay special attention to things that happened 18ish years ago since each cohort’s mindset is shaped by stuff that happened around when they were born. We also relied on lazy stereotypes and trivia of interest to us. We didn’t spend much time putting this together and we didn’t check it for accuracy or comprehensibility.

So how did we do? We predicted around 20% of the Mindset items. Here are some comparisons between the two lists:

For this generation of entering college students, born in 1995, Dean Martin, Mickey Mantle, and Jerry Garcia have always been dead. (Mindset List)

For this generation of entering college students, born in 1995, Howard Cosell, Jerry Garcia, Mickey Mantle, Dean Martin, and Ginger Rogers have always been dead. (Mindlessness List)

Our list had two more dead celebrities.

1. Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents’ weekend. (Mindset List)

1. They should keep their eyes open for Olympians Missy Franklin and McKayla Maroney and reality show star Kendall Jenner at freshman orientation. (Mindlessness List)

We chose different sets of 18-year-olds to pretend might attend your college.

4. As they started to crawl, so did the news across the bottom of the television screen. (Mindset List)

10. A crawl is no longer just a way for babies to move forward on their hands and knees. (Mindlessness List)

News crawls.

6. As their parents held them as infants, they may have wondered whether it was the baby or Windows 95 that had them more excited. (Mindset List)

2. They have never been dependent on MS-DOS as a standalone operating system. (Mindlessness List)

The Mindset guys have a bleak view of parenthood.

16. A tablet is no longer something you take in the morning. (Mindset List)

6. A “tablet” has never been just a slab of stone for making inscriptions. (Mindlessness List)

Tablet computers.

19. Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid. (Mindset List)

8. Plasma is no longer just a pale liquid component of blood. (Mindlessness List)

Plasma TVs are around 18 years old.

27. Thanks to Megan’s Law and Amber Alerts, parents have always had community support in keeping children safe. (Mindset List)

23. When kidnapped by estranged parents they have always been able to come home via the Amber Alert System. (Mindlessness List)

Amber Alerts are around 18 years old.

29. Java has never been just a cup of coffee. (Mindset List)

17. Java is a computer language, not an Indonesian island, early example of Homo erectus, or slang term for coffee. (Mindlessness List)

We get extra points for having two more meanings of “java.”

34. Yahoo has always been looking over its shoulder for the rise of “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” (Mindset List)

21. Yahoo has always been a web portal, not an imaginary race of brutish creatures in Gulliver’s Travels. (Mindlessness List)

Yahoo! is around 18 years old.

41. As they slept safely in their cribs, the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were doing their deadly work. (Mindset List)

15. There has never been a Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. (Mindlessness List)

26. The Unabomber has always been a published writer. (Mindlessness List)

I guess we got carried away with the “aways” & “never” stuff.

 47. Dayton, Ohio, has always been critical to international peace accords. (Mindset List)

13. Dayton, Ohio, has always been known for the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace treaty rather than as the home of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Wright Brothers. (Mindlessness List)

The Class of 2017 is ignorant about Paul Laurence Dunbar.

49. They may have been introduced to video games with a new Sony PlayStation left in their cribs by their moms. (Mindset List)

29. Good-bye, NES! Hello, PlayStation! (Mindlessness List)

Two different previous Mindset lists (Classes of 2009 & 2012) claimed that students may have had Gameboys in their cribs. We claimed in our opening paragraph that  “They may have had PlayStations in their cribs.” This was a joke because, unlike Gameboys, the Playstation isn’t a handheld device. But apparently the Mindset guys don’t know that.

50. A Wiki has always been a cooperative web application rather than a shuttle bus in Hawaii. (Mindset List)

5. Their grandparents had the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer and other great works of Western Civilization. They have wikis. (Mindlessness List)

I like ours better.

52. They have always been able to plug into USB ports. (Mindset List)

28. They’ve always been getting connected with USB. (Mindlessness List)

The universal serial bus is around 18 years old.

In the coming days, we’ll be scrutinizing the Class of 2017 Mindset items, and we invite the Mindset team to do the same to ours. And as we claimed in the introduction to our list:

Even if the Class of 2017 Mindset List isn’t identical to ours, they are equally valid, accurate and useful. So feel free to mix and match items as you choose.

#16 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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While they’ve grown up with a World Trade Organization, they have never known an Interstate Commerce Commission. (Class of 2017, #23)

This item is ridiculous as it supposed that the Interstate Commerce Commission was more than a peripheral blip on the radars of most average Janes and Joes before it was abolished in 1995. It’s remaining regulatory responsibilities were transferred to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) post 1995. How many students consider the STB to be an important cultural touchstone today? Likewise, would they have cared much about the ICC had they lived during the previous generation? The most important thing the ICC did culturally was abolish segregation on bus lines and in railroad dining cars, but that happened in the 1950s and early 1960s. Given that, conceivably the ICC could have been an item on the BML for the class of 1979 if the BML existed then, but even that is a stretch.

Should we expect an item on the 2018 list that mentions the shuttering of the Board of Tea Appeals in 1996? The BTA was a federal agency that adjudicated claims by tea importers who were denied the right to sell their products by a board of tea-tasters who made sure tea imported into the U.S. was of sufficient quality. That sounds more important than what the ICC was or wasn’t doing during the year they were born.

Crusty old professors are still mourning the closure of all the defunct New Deal agencies, so the reminder that the Bureau of Tea Appeals is gone may hit a raw nerve.

The Class of 2017 Beloit Mindlessness List

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This year’s entering college class was born with the universal serial bus and they’ve always been connected. They may have had PlayStations in their cribs and their first solid food may have been stuffed crust pizza, but they’ve never visited the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List and (barring an act of God) will release another one Tuesday morning. We don’t know for sure what items it will contain but we’ve attempted to simulate its results by using similar methods for generating our own Beloit Mindlessness List.

Our list was compiled by a couple of guys without any assistance from or contact with anyone from the Class of 2017. Although we didn’t use microfiche, we did pay special attention to things that happened 18ish years ago since each cohort’s mindset is shaped by stuff that happened around when they were born. We also relied on lazy stereotypes and trivia of interest to us. We didn’t spend much time putting this together and we didn’t check it for accuracy or comprehensibility.

Even if the Class of 2017 Mindset List isn’t identical to ours, they are equally valid, accurate and useful. So feel free to mix and match items as you choose.

The Beloit Mindlessness List for the Class of 2017

For this generation of entering college students, born in 1995, Howard Cosell, Jerry Garcia, Mickey Mantle, Dean Martin, and Ginger Rogers have always been dead.

1. They should keep their eyes open for Olympians Missy Franklin and McKayla Maroney and reality show star Kendall Jenner at freshman orientation.

2. They have never been dependent on MS-DOS as a standalone operating system.

3. Computers have always been checkmating human grand masters.

4. They have always had the option of eating a stuffed crust pizza.

5. Their grandparents had the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer and other great works of Western Civilization. They have wikis.

6. A “tablet” has never been just a slab of stone for making inscriptions.

7. Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s avant-garde filmmaking movement is named after the year of their birth.

8. Plasma is no longer just a pale liquid component of blood.

9. This “Multitasking Generation” likes to eat its stuffed pizza while reading wikis on their tablets and watching Dogme 95 films on their plasma televisions.

10. A crawl is no longer just a way for babies to move forward on their hands and knees.

11. They have always known Gabe Kaplan as a professional poker player and not as wisecracking Brooklyn teacher Mr. Kotter.

12. Pedophiles have always lured them with compliments in chat rooms rather than with candy from the window of an unmarked van.

13. Dayton, Ohio, has always been known for the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace treaty rather than as the home of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Wright Brothers.

14. On the day they were born, their parents may have been listening to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Isn’t that ironic?

15. There has never been a Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

16. A troll no longer lives under a bridge.

17. Java is a computer language, not an Indonesian island, early example of Homo erectus, or slang term for coffee.

18. The Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act has always been delaying their porn careers until age 18.

19. “Oprah, Uma. Uma, Oprah”? Their idea of a bad Oscar host is James Franco.

20.There has always been football in Charlotte, but never in Los Angeles.

21. Yahoo has always been a web portal, not an imaginary race of brutish creatures in Gulliver’s Travels.

22. Nazis have always been unreasonably strict soup makers, not invaders of Poland.

23. When kidnapped by estranged parents they have always been able to come home via the Amber Alert System.

24. Doogie and Michele Houser could be their parents.

25. Woody has always been a pullstring cowboy doll, not an assistant bartender.

26. The Unabomber has always been a published writer.

27. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has always been the Panchen Lama. Who is Lobsang Trinley Lhündrub Chökyi Gyaltsen?

28. They’ve always been getting connected with USB.

29. Good-bye, NES! Hello, PlayStation!

30. They don’t want to be Left Behind, but they don’t mind reading about it.

31. Betty Rubble has always been a vitamin.

32. Barack Obama has always been getting dreams from his father.

33. Talk show guests have always been murdering each other over confessions of same-sex attraction.

34. Craig is a guy who sells stuff on the Internet, not the star of Poltergeist and Coach.

35. Lockheed has always worked with Martin, but Rowan has never worked with Martin.

36. Their mothers may have gone into labor while drinking Jolt Cola.

37. Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern have always lived in New York City and never in Minneapolis.

38. Independence Day has always been about escaping Alien rule rather than British monarchy.

39. Semi-literate cattle have always been telling them to “Eat Mor Chikin!”

40. Lisa Simpson has always been a vegetarian.

41. Calvin Klein has always been in the faux child porn business.

42. Bee Keeping, Masonry and Consumer Buying have never been Boy Scout merit badges.

43. Like students in the classes of 2002-2016, members of the class of 2017 are ignorant about Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite and Who Shot J.R. (it was Kristin, his sister-in-law and mistress.)

– Aug. 19, 2013

#15 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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They have never seen Larry Bird play, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a football player. (Class of 2002, #31)

Members of the class of 2002 were born in 1980. Larry Bird retired from pro basketball in 1992 when members of this class would have been 12 so this item assumes that anyone in this class would not have watched professional basketball or noticed one of the NBA’s most popular players play for one of the league’s most popular teams until after the age of 12. The summer after his final NBA season, Bird played in all eight games for the gold-medal winning United States basketball “Dream Team” alongside Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley. Sports Illustrated called that team “arguably the most dominant squad ever assembled in any sport.” What 12 year old wouldn’t be interested in watching that given the hype surrounding the Olympics that year?

The second part of this item assumes that when two athletes have the same or similar  names the memories of the first (older) athlete are cancelled out by the existence of the second (younger) athlete. In this case the authors of the Beloit Mindset List want you to believe that a middling NFL running back had erased the memory of one of the NBA’s all time greats. In fact in the middle of Karim Abdul-Jabbar’s (nee Sharmon Shah) (KAJ-NFL) rookie season (1996) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (KAJ-NBA) was named to the NBA’s “50 Greatest Players” list complete with the accompanying hoopla. The similarity between the two athletes’ names was mentioned in game recaps and KAJ (NBA) eventually sued KAJ (NFL) for trying to ride his name to glory and profit. KAJ (NBA) eventually prevailed and in 2000 KAJ (NFL) changed his name to Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, but by that time all the HGH injections couldn’t salvage his brief NFL career.

KAJ (NBA) played in the NBA until members of the class of 2002 were 9 years old. As in the Larry Bird item above, to buy into this you would have to believe that kids don’t watch basketball until they are at least teenagers. Not only that, you would have to believe that kids on every basketball court in America had never tried a “sky-hook” and had never heard of its originator.

Six -time NBA champ, and six-time MVP, KAJ (NBA) played for 20 seasons and has a list of accomplishments too long to list here. Compare that to KAJ (NFL) who played five seasons from 1996-2006. He gained only 3,411 yards in his NFL career and was notable only for being the NFL touchdowns leader in 1997 with 33. His career ended with a whimper in 2000 with a one-game stint with the Indianapolis Colts in which he gained -2 yards on 1 rushing attempt.

This doubly dubious item clearly shows that the BCML’s authors know nothing about sports, fame, or the college students whose intelligences they attempt to insult.