Want to know how this year's college freshman class sees the world? Beloit College has compiled a list of 70 things that have always been true for them.
If you start from the correct premise that most of these kids were born in 1989, here's the way the world looks to them:
What Berlin wall?
Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.Rap music has always been mainstream.
Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
Women have always been police chiefs in major cities
Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it
Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names
Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal
They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee
Most phone calls have never been private
China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre
MTV has never featured music videos
They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper
Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil
The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born
One of the biggest challenges those of us who teach face is remembering how fast the world changes. Things we assume to be common knowledge often aren't for the kids in our classrooms.
Assume nothing. Explain everything. Make their time in the classroom count. Soon enough they'll be out in "the real world" with jobs, homes, and kids of their own. The lessons of history are lost if they aren't passed along from one generation to the next.
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