Blog Archives

A MINDSET LIST® GUIDE TO THE CLASS OF 2016

by Tom McBride

A GUIDE TO THE MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2016 By Tom McBride & Ron Nief  Authors of The Beloit College Mindset List® and The Mindset Lists of American History (Wiley, 2011)   Spoiled or Conned? Ask someone only five or six years older than members of the Class of 2016 how things have changed, and you may get an earful. You may learn that the new kids on the block have never had to listen to a rock station waiting for their favorite songs because they’ve always had I-Pods. You may find out that the old Napster file sharing has gone on steroids, so there’s almost nothing that isn’t “sharable” now. You’ll discover that now there’s less and   Read on »

The Mindset Lists of American History In America’s Classrooms

by Tom McBride

Both The Mindset Lists of American History and The Mindset List are finding their way into America’s classrooms. They are useful for: Offering a generational approach to the study of American history. Students can find out more about their own generation by comparing it to the attitudes and “normality” of previous ones. Connecting personal history to national history. Students can conduct interviews with living family members—and do archival research into the lives of dead ones—in order to write their own family’s Mindset List. Fostering a sense that history is now. Instead of viewing history as something entirely in the past, with dusty tomes, students learn that they are just the latest generation to make history—in the present; they become much   Read on »