Beloit College in Wisconsin has released their annual "Mindset List," or what are and aren't cultural references for the incoming class of freshmen.  I'm always interested in these lists, though they always depress me a little bit, as they began as a reminder to college professors to "watch your references" and seem to reinforce the idea (prevalent among the college freshmen I taught) that the kids entering college shouldn't be expected to have any understanding of things that happened before they were born, and that it's the role of their teachers to act accordingly.

 Anyway, I entered college in August 1998, the first year Beloit put out their list, and I decided to see just how accurate their "Class of 2002" list was.  I'm the older of two children, had married, college-educated parents (though neither worked in the fields they studied), grew up lower-middle class in small-town, rural Indiana, went to public kindergarten, Catholic grade school, and public junior high and high school.  I don't think I had an exceptional childhood.  Here goes my take on the list (and I promise I'm answering these questions as I would have as an 18-year-old; i.e., none of the stuff I know about here is stuff I've learned in the past 11 years):

1.  The people starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1980.   True.
2.  They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era, and did not know he had ever been shot.    I was eight years old when Reagan left office.  I didn't spend my first eight years under a rock.  Reagan was on the news all the time talking to Margaret Thatcher from the United Kingdom (though everyone just called it England) and Mikhail Gorbachev from the Soviet Union (though everyone just called it Russia).  I was in diapers when the assasination attempt happened, but I knew he was shot in 1981 by a crazy guy who was determined to impress Jodie Foster.  Pope John Paul II was shot that same year by a Turkish man.  The Pope forgave his attacker and visited him in prison.
3. They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged.   True.
4. Black Monday 1987 is as significant to them as the Great Depression.   False.  Since my parents weren't invested much if at all in the stock market, it took a little bit longer for the recession to hit us.  My grandma talked about how bad things were in the Depression A LOT though.
5. There has only been one Pope. They can only remember one other president.   There has been only one Pope in my lifetime, but I'm not an idiot.  I know that there were other popes before him, and that John Paul I was only pope for about a month before he died.  I remember both Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  Again, I was eight years old when Reagan left office.
6. They were 11 when the Soviet Union broke apart, and do not remember the Cold War.   True on the first part, somewhat false on the second.  I didn't have to duck and cover, but "War Games" was a popular movie, Gorbachev was on the news ALL THE TIME talking about Glasnost, and it was a very big deal when Moscow got its first McDonald's.
7. They have never feared a nuclear war. "The Day After" is a pill to them—not a movie.   False--I feared all those unaccounted-for Soviet missiles falling into the wrong hands.  
8. They are too young to remember the Space Shuttle Challenger blowing up.  False--I watched it on T.V., first at my Aunt Judy's house, then saw snippets of the disaster at the school office at Rosenmund School, where I was in kindergarten.  Christa McAuliffe, a teacher, was one of those killed.  She seemed much nicer than my teacher, Mrs. Ellinger, who hated me.
9. Their lifetime has always included AIDS.   True.
10. They never had a polio shot, and likely, do not know what it is.   True on the first, false on the second.  I got the oral polio vaccine on a sugar cube. 
11. Bottle caps have not always been screw off, but have always been plastic. They have no idea what a pull top can looks like.   False.  We bought Coke in six-packs of glass bottles from Marsh as late as 1987, and saved the empties in the basement, because you got money for returning them.  The caps were metal, and we used a bottle opener with a yellow plastic handle to open them.  When I was very young, my Uncle Bill drank a brand of beer that still used pull-tops.  I don't remember the brand, but I remember the cans being different and harder to open than the Coke cans, and being told by Grandpa to be careful when picking the "tabs" off the metal part of the lid that pulled away because it was easy to cut yourself doing that.  Once at a family reunion, Uncle Bill and Uncle Joe had too many to drink and couldn't get the pull-tops open, or they'd broken off the tabs without opening the cans, and they yelled for someone to bring them a churchkey to open them the old-fashioned way, and then they had trouble with that too.  Which I remembered thinking was probably a good sign that they should quit drinking.
12. Atari pre-dates them, as do vinyl albums.  Completely false.  I played Pac-Man at arcades and at my cousin Paul's house, and I wanted my own record player more than anything when I was six.
13. The expression "you sound like a broken record" means nothing to them.  False--see above.
14. They have never owned a record player.  Technically true--I never got that record player, but my parents went through at least three different ones during my childhood.
15. They have likely never played Pac Man, and have never heard of "Pong."  False on the first one--see #13, false on the second--Dad bragged ALL THE TIME about being the dorm champion of Pong when he was in college.
16. Star Wars looks very fake to them, and the special effects are pathetic.  True.
17. There have always been red M&Ms, and blue ones are not new. What do you mean there used to be beige ones?  I remember the contest to vote on the new M&M color.  Blue won over pink and purple.  Didn't know that red wasn't an original M&M color and had no clue about the beige ones, though there were light brown ones before the blue ones replaced them.  Is that what you're talking about?
18. They may never have heard of an 8-track, and chances are they've never heard or seen one.   False.  I was born in 1980.  Those 1978 BeeGees 8-tracks didn't just evaporate with the invention of the audiocassette. 
19. The compact disc was introduced when they were one year old. True.  But my parents didn't buy one until I was in the 6th grade, and I first saw a CD only a year or two before that--my cousins Jenny and Paul were playing them on the new stereo at Aunt Nancy's house.  We had vinyl records and cassette tapes until then.
20. As far as they know, stamps have always cost about 32 cents.   False.  They were 25 cents when we moved out to the country.  When we ran out of stamps, Mom would tape a quarter to the envelope, to the consternation of the mailman.
21. They have always had an answering machine.  False.  We got one as a gift when I was in junior high.  It didn't know how to handle incoming calls because we had a party line telephone.  My brother and I figured out that if you pressed a certain combination of buttons on it, you could tap the phones of the other people on the line.  We spent a whole snow day playing F.B.I. spies and doing this once.  Unfortunately, since the other people on our party line were three farmers and a butcher, all the calls we taped had to do with dead cows.
22. Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels, nor have they seen a black & white TV.  I took our old B&W television to the dorm with me because Mom said I could have it.  I think my parents got it as a wedding present in 1977.  It had more than 13 channels, though--it had a separate UHF dial.
23. They have always had cable.  False.  The cable company didn't come out to where we lived till I was in late grade school.  My parents still refused to get it, because they weren't about to pay for TV.
24. There have always been VCRs, but they have no idea what Beta is.  First part, true, but not everyone had them.  We didn't get one till 1985 or 1986, a year after our cousins did.  Second part, false--another set of cousins had Betamax.
25. They cannot fathom what it was like not having a remote control.  False--see the B&W television set with the VHF and UHF dials.  The cousins who got the VCR before us had one with a corded remote control.  We were always tripping over it.
26. They were born the year Walkmen were introduced by Sony. True.
27. Roller-skating has always meant in-line for them.   False.  I have never put on a pair of in-line skates.  I had a pair of plastic, normal Fisher-Price skates that adjusted and fit over my shoes.  My brother and I had to share them.  We got them for Christmas 1985 or 1986.  They had a bad tendency to open up and come off for no reason.  The Club 46 roller rink--where my parents told me they'd disown me if I got to be a teenager and they EVER found out I'd been making out with anybody at, and where a lot of my classmates had birthday parties--rented regular skates.  You were allowed to bring your own, but in-line skates were banned.
28. "The Tonight Show" has always been with Jay Leno.   False.  My parents watched Johnny Carson.  He was replaced by Leno when I was in fifth or sixth grade I think.
29. They have no idea when or why Jordache jeans were cool.  They were cool in the early 1980s.  I had hand-me-down pairs from my cousins.  As to WHY they were ever cool, your guess is as good as mine.
30. Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.   False.  It was made in the electric skillet or on the stove.  We didn't get a reliable microwave till I was in grade school, and microwave popcorn didn't pop right and mostly burned in the sack for a very long time after it was introduced.
31. They have never seen Larry Bird play, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a football player.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played football?
32. They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.   True.  But then, I never saw the ocean till I was ten years old.
33. The Vietnam War is as ancient history to them as WWI and WWII or even the Civil War.   False.  My mother had an old boyfriend who wrote her letters from Vietnam.  She talked about him a lot.  My father was a year too young for the draft, but a good third of my classmates had fathers who served.  Bobby Garwood was from my hometown.  I went to school with his niece Kristina.  My Dad worked with his brother Jack.
34. They have no idea that Americans were ever held hostage in Iran.   False.  I was just a baby when this was going on, but it got referenced enough on the news during the Iran-Iraq war and during the whole Ollie North debacle.
35. They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.  I've never seen a pair, but I'm aware of their existence.
36. They don't know who Mork was, or where he was from. Mork was from Ork, he was played by Robin Williams, he aged in reverse, Jonathan Winters played his son.  Nanu nanu.  If I had to hear Dad do his "Mork" impression one more time...
37. They never heard the terms "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel" or "De plane, de plane!"  Do Dad's incessant repetitions of these catchphrases count?
38. They do not care who shot J.R. and have no idea who J.R. is.  J.R. Ewing was an oil baron character on the nighttime soap opera "Dallas."  No, I do not care who shot him.
39. The Titanic was found? I thought we always knew where it was.   It was found when I was in kindergarten.  It was sort of a big deal and on the news.  PBS did countless specials on it.
40. Michael Jackson has always been white.  He has always been a black man trying to look like a white woman. 
41. Kansas, Boston, Chicago, America, and Alabama are all places—not music groups.  They're both. 
42. McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.   The McDLT, anyone?  How do you think they kept the hot side hot and the cold side cold without styrofoam?
43. There has always been MTV, and it has always included non-musical shows.   MTV went on the air in 1981, so yeah, I don't remember a time without it existing.  I never had cable, though, and neither did a good half of my classmates, so I don't know when it switched from music videos to other shows.

As I'm going through this list, what strikes me is that there seemed to be less of a divide between the world of children and the world of adults in the 1980s.  I mean, as a second grader I certainly wouldn't have been able to explain Perestroika, but I'd certainly heard the word and knew it had to do with Gorbachev and Russians not having to wait in line to buy pantyhose, and I'd heard my Dad call Maggie Thatcher "Reagan in a dress" and knew he didn't mean it literally.  I watched the news and "60 Minutes" because that's what my parents had on the TV.    Vietnam was less than a decade before I was born, and people still talked about it when talking about whether we should go into Panama. 

On the other hand, I may have just been an outlier.

So I'm wondering...what effect will entire television networks devoted to children's programming, entire restaurants catering just to kids, and these sorts of things have on future generations of college freshmen?