Blog Archives
Author contacts: Ron Nief (608-770-2625) niefr@beloit.edu Tom McBride (608-312-9508) mcbridet@beloit.edu Charles Westerberg (608-225-8100) weserbergc@beloit.edu Beloit College Releases The Mindset List for This Year’s Entering Class of First-Year College Students, The Class of 2019 Beloit, Wis. — Members of the entering college class of 2019 were mostly born in 1997 and have never licked a postage stamp, have assumed that WiFi is an entitlement, and have no first-hand experience of Princess Diana’s charismatic celebrity. Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. For this year’s entering class there has always been Google; Email, informal to previous Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST® SPEAKS! Looking for Great and Time-Tested Public Speakers? Tom McBride and Ron Nief, co-authors of The Beloit College Mindset List® and The Mindset Lists of American History (Wiley, 2011) and The Mindset List of the Obscure (Sourcebooks, 2014) speak frequently about the generation gap around the country and to a wide variety of organizations. We’ve spoken, led workshops and delivered the keynote addresses to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national convention, to library associations, museum staff, and to educators at all levels, to state retirement fund administrators and to to educators and specialists dealing with youth and financial literacy, And all this is but a small sample. We work with our Read on »
Here’s a Mindset List® Blog, Updated From Time to Time To respond, write to mcbridet@beloit.edu Today’s Kids Are Terrific! The older generation often despairs of the young Millennials. They fiddle with their smart phones and never look an elderly person in the eye. They spend countless hours idling on the Internet. By these accounts the kids are terrible, and America is in trouble. But the kids are OK. Do they text all the time? Yes, of course, but their ability to squeeze a lot of information into a small space is the basis for superb academic discipline. No less than Sherlock Holmes said, of the brief telegram, that it forced him to state exactly what he meant. Millennials are ready to Read on »
THE SPIRITUAL MILLENNIALS Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities, February 1, 2015, Washington, DC Tom McBride Generation gaps are tricky, and their subtlety ranges from the trivial to the profound. At the level of the silly is the mother who tells her fifteen year-old daughter that she will put her “John Hancock” on a school permissions slip, only to have her daughter respond: “Mother, stop talking dirty at your age.” More deeply, the lessons learned by one generation seem irrelevant to the next, as illustrated by how the privation and patriotism of the Greatest Generation made no sense to the far more prosperous Baby Boomers who donned their beads and grew their hair and broke store windows in order to protest Read on »
Selma and American Amnesia By Ron Nief The story is circulating that when many potential viewers of the new film about Martin Luther King Jr. heard it was called Selma and produced by Oprah Winfrey, they assumed it was a story about a woman and her struggles growing up in the South. As authors of the annual Mindset List that looks at the world through the eyes and experiences of 18 year old high school graduates, we call situations like this “Mindset Moments.” They are the occasions when a comment by an adult to a young person, or sometimes vice versa, is greeted with a blank stare. They are generally inconsequential and even funny—calling a young piano student a “potential Read on »
Our Parents’ Advisory for the Class of 2037 The annual watch is on, starting at midnight. For some, the real New Year’s fireworks will come with the arrival of the first baby born in 2015. News reports will cover the blessed events around the world. But amidst all the celebrating, parents and grandparents might want to think ahead, because this child, born in 2015, will turn 18 in 2033, graduate from high school, and head off into the next chapter of his or her life. There will be a lot of questions that need answering about that time. To help in preparing for the future, the authors of the Beloit College Mindset List, which looks at the worldview of students Read on »
Note: These two brief journeys down Memory Lane originally appeared in TODAY’S SENIOR Magazine as part of a continuing series. Remember When “The Shadow” Knew? By Tom McBride and Ron Nief When we were kids—it was just yesterday, plus 60 years or so—our favorite radio program was The Shadow, a crime series about a psychic vigilante named Lamont Cranston, determined to prove that the fruits of crime were always bitter. Traveling through the “Far East” Cranston acquired a gift that “clouded men’s minds” so they could not see him. This presented a real disadvantage to criminals, whom Cranston managed to scare and snare. He therefore put an end to their felonious deeds, every Sunday afternoon. The Shadow himself was Read on »
From the creators of THE MINDSET LIST®: The FINANCIAL Mindset List® For the Class of 2018 By Tom McBride and Ron Nief Today’s entering college students have spent most of their teenage years in a recession that has left employment, homes, educations, friends, and relatives uncertain about the future. Members of this year’s entering college class were born in 1996. If they are lucky and work hard they will graduate in four years with the class of 2018. In order to maintain the purchasing power of the dollar the year they were born, they will need to come up with an additional fifty-two cents. Since they were born, tuition and fees at public universities have gone up more than Read on »