Friends, Here is this year's list of factors that comprise the cultural gap between us and this year's Freshpersons as developed at Beloit College and reported in USA Today. The URL contains the list. The article follows. Al http://www.usatoday.com/life/lds014.htm#class Today's college freshmen probably have never dialed a telephone. Born in 1981, they have had Sony Walkmen, PCs, NutraSweet and AIDS around all their lives. For them, there has always been a woman on the Supreme Court. Cats has always been on Broadway. John Lennon and John Belushi have always been dead. And news has always been available from USA TODAY and CNN. We've always known that baby boomers and today's 18-year-olds don't share a lot of cultural touchstones and icons. But now Beloit (Wis.) College has dramatized that difference with a list that will set off a frenzy of remembering for boomers. It's a nonscientific grab bag of items suggested by faculty, staff and students. But it has something of a serious purpose for the folks teaching at Beloit. "Today's 18-year-olds have had a narrow experience with popular culture," says Tom McBride, an English professor at Beloit. "They can't be counted on to understand certain references that are second nature to us." For McBride, it is particularly poignant that they have never heard newsman Walter Cronkite say, "That's the way it is." McBride thinks that is a loss. And it also is a reminder "about how quickly pop culture is changing. About how fleeting images are and how rapidly they change." For those who are older, he says, "there is a sense of worry that certain long-term achievements will be forgotten." But then again, today's freshmen can wax nostalgic, too. They can remember when Atari was a state-of-the-art video game system and they owned cassette singles, McBride says. And he has great hope for them as students. " Al L. Cone, Ph.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 6019 College Lane http://www.jc.edu/users/faculty/cone Jamestown College Jamestown, ND 58405
