Fuck Beloit College Up Their Stinking Janesville Asses

I've been wanting to blog on the Mindset List for a while now.

In case you're unfamiliar: Beloit College, a liberal-arts school in Southern Wisconsin (that's in Ripon's conference), puts out this thing every year called the Mindset List. A few humanities or social sciences professors sit around and list a whole bunch of cultural references that, while familiar to adults, are not familiar to 18-year old freshman.

"Professors will teach by referring to cultural information for purposes of analogy or illustration," Beloit College humanities professor Tom McBride, one of two who developed the list, told the AP. "But the kind of information they're using may simply not be relevant to 18-year-old minds."

So presumably, the purpose of the list is to give College professors an idea of how far-removed they are from the world in which their 18-year old students live. Of course, this is suspect (and, well, ridiculous) for two reasons:

1. It assumes 18-year old students can't relate to cultural references to anything that happened before 1990 or so. For example, the sixth item on the survey tells readers that, to this year's incoming class, "Pete Rose has always been a gambler." So, we're to assume that -- since he got in trouble for gambling in 1989 -- no one born after 1985 has knowledge of the fact that he once played baseball?

   What the authors of the list are saying (and it's immediately obvious when you look at the way each item on the list is phrased: "They have always been able to fly Virgin Atlantic," for example) is that young people have no sense of the world that came before them. "Youngsters today have it easy," the stodgy Beloit professors lament. "In my day, Rupert Murdoch wasn't even a citizen!"

   Do they really think college-bound young-adults have no idea that the world that existed before them was different? Do they really think all 18-year-olds assume that The Fresh Prince of Bel Air has always been on the air? What this McBride guy said is really telling: he believes that "18-year-old minds" are too feeble to comprehend that events that took place before they were born -- or cognizant of the world around them -- are relevant.

2. It places far too much importance on relatively meaningless trivia. Examples:

   14. The United States has always had a Poet Laureate.
   29. The Army has always driven Humvees.
   37. There has always been Lean Cuisine.
   38. They have always been able to fly Virgin Atlantic.
   45. Rupert Murdoch has always been an American citizen.

   Are any of these remotely important? Do we have to warn professors not to make mention of those dark days when Americans flew to Britain on non-Virgin Atlantic airplanes, not eating Lean Cuisine and not reading the works of a fine Poet Laureate?

   There are some significant differences about the way young people and their elders see the world. There are some important and profound observations to be made about a generation that's grown up with information at its fingertips, with natural resources readily available, with a shared sense of pop culture (due to the saturation of television). The facts that we now eat Lean Cuisine, that the Army drives Hummers, and that Rupert Murdoch is an American citizen are entirely irrelevent.

I guess I'm just fascinated that Beloit College is so ready to put their name on this. The real truth of the matter -- and this is what's really telling about all the useless trivia on the list -- is that the only reason that a tiny liberal arts school in Janesville puts this out (and the only reason the AP wrote a story about it) is that every year, this stupid list is e-mailed all over, and people look at it and think to themselves, "Wow, back in my day things were different." The list famous for being crap in our e-mail boxes.

Which is why I'm surprised the college is so proud to put it out there. They're saying: "Look, our professors are really stodgy and need to be reminded that culture changes rapidly." Or maybe they're saying, "Look, or incoming freshman class is really stupid and self-centered and we need to remind ourselves that they're too dumb to realize that computers used to be really big." Either way, I think these professors who wrote the list wasted their time.

If they really cared about the mindset of their new students (and not just the fact that they've always been able to drink Cherry Coke out of a can), then maybe they'd sit down with these (presumably bright) 18-year-olds and ask them, "Tell me about the world you live in."

(In case you missed the link earlier, click here to read the Mindset List, along with Beloit's press release about it.)

Comments

[Alex McBride]

I should begin by admitting a nepotistic bias: I am Tom McBride's son. With that being stated, I should point out that Beloit College is, in fact, in Beloit, and not Janesville, WI (Beloit is a town some 20 minutes south of Janesville, and is about 2/3 its size in population).

My more substantive critique of your polemic concerns your apparent conflation between the content and implications of 'The List' itself with how it is actually received by the media. Much of the media interprets The List as a series of fun facts designed for purposes of instant pleasure. Baby boomers may feel a sense of cultural superiority over Generations X and Y, or a cheap vindication of their potentail inability to richly communicate with their children. The talk shows and emails that throw The List around, then, seem to do so for this purpose, a purpose that is behind much of the content of mass media today in general, which, incidently, is an excellence contivance of The List's fuller implications the media itself choses to ignore, implications for which, as I understand, the list was originally created.

It is becoming more and more apparent that college age students today occupy a different nation than my father did in the late 60s, or even, perhaps, than I did in the 90s. We truly live in a fragmented culture of, largely, tittilation. A truly national political, moral or even cultural dialogue is becoming non-existant. Political and geographic bounderies are more and more erased through technology, while just as many new (and imagined) ones take their place. Information on individual pleasure or gain increases while more community-based, analytic content (politics, morality, the news, history) decreases. The List, then, seems to me to suggest not only a breakdown in dialogue between professors and students, but perhaps also the students themselves. If the vibrancy of the Liberal Arts is contigent upon at least some understanding of the human past's vast tome of knowledge

[Alex McBriide]

If the vibrancy of the liberal arts is contigent upon at least some understanding of the human past's vast tome of knowledge, along with a shared commitment for a more intellectually-rich, imaginative civilzation, then this emerging generation, so overwhelmed by information to please and forget, had better have college professors who understand just how outnumbered they are, and are thus motivated and empowered enough to, at the very least, begin to buck the trend.

Yours sincerely,
Alex McBride

[nellie]

i have to say, way back in my day, all of four or five years ago, nobody really paid much attention to the Mindset list. it was pretty much viewed as entertainment, like lettermans top ten or 'you know you're a redneck when...' type things. perhaps not to that degree, it must have been taken seriously at some point.

i know this is not entirely relevant, but many of the beloit professors are quite young and invigorating, although of course there is the stodgy contingent. the college itself is far from utopia, but it was - and although things are changing, still is - a great college. despite learning the myriad things one learns with a liberal education we all had fun, we all survived the threat of being pigeon-holed by the mindset list.

i don't think there's much point to the list. it's a great generalization and certainly can't be applied to everyone. but you really shouldn't endow the mindset list with importance it doesn't have. and don't you think that fucking beloit college up it's stinking [beloit] ass is a little off-track? i hope it's not simply a ripon-beloit thing.

[ro473ck]

m746k

[Joe]

so yeah, back to what alex said, and this is i know severall years after the fact, Beloit college is in Beloit Wisconsin, not as you stated Janesville, Alex, if you ever read this look me up, I live in madison now, This is Joe Rau from highschool, but back to dude here, Janesville is an alright town, Beloit isn't so bad either, and the list is fun, i think meant more for the learning for the faculty than the students, get over it, what did yo get denied entrance to Ripon or Beloit College? are you a bitter twat? seems that way to me.

[ma174zda]

c261t

[Park]

I graduated from Beloit not long before this blog entry was originally put out. I must say, at the time, (though I worked with and greatly respected Prof. Tom McBride) my sentiment wasn't too far from yours, Josh. In fact, a year or two previously, I circulated a student's response list around campus (which I had emailed back to me a year or so later) consisting of comments pretty much like that you made regarding the Pete Rose entry. But I think we both had it wrong. For those outside the ivory tower, the list serves as a reminder of Beloit's existence (no advertising like free advertising), provide a laugh, and (as Alex so well put it) give Boomers a sense of superiority. After all, it is Boomers who currently hold the purse strings, and their satisfaction is in the best interest of any financial endeavor, which (sadly) includes liberal arts colleges.

However, to professors who care, despite the sometimes condescending wording, the list serves - and was originally designed, I believe - to remind them just how different their world is from that which their students have been inhabiting, something of which many professors NEED to be reminded. This is true even for those young and/or vigorous professors (like Tom and most of the Beloit faculty I have known) who already do a fantastic job of connecting with their students.

I must also say that, since I graduated and since this was written, I've actually spent some time teaching freshman, and, I am constantly amazed at how much vital cultural history - knowledge which I take for granted - is wholly unknown and sometimes sadly uninteresting to them. And, again, I am only 10 years their senior. I heartily invite you to take the mindset list and discuss it with an 18 year old. You might change your mind concerning its usefulness.

And if the sometimes condescending wording of the list pisses off know-it-all youngsters like you and me, then so much the better for it. Let them be pissed, and perhaps they'll take the energy from that pissyness and do something with it, like start a conversation and spread some knowledge around. And if it pisses off some not-so-know-it-all 18 year olds EVEN BETTER. Maybe they'll read the list and actually learn something.