To the class of 2014 Beethoven is a dog and Michelangelo was a computer virus.
The 2010 Mindset study of US students entering university found they think Clint Eastwood was a director – not an actor who played Dirty Harry – and Fergie is less the Duchess of York and more a pop star.
They can’t write in cursive and think email is too slow, according to the annual list compiled by two US college academics.
The students will get their bachelor’s degrees in 2014, despite thinking Czechoslovakia never existed and John McEnroe stars in TV ads, not on the tennis court.
The list, first compiled in 1998 for the class of 2002, is the project of humanities professor Tom McBride and former public affairs director Ron Nief.
Intended as a reminder to faculty at the pair’s university, Beloit, that references quickly become dated, the list quickly became an annual release giving a snapshot of how things have changed. Mindset also serves to chronicle key cultural and political events that have shaped a generation.
The first Mindset list found youngsters born in 1980 had only ever known of one pope – Polish-born John Paul II, who was elected to the papacy in 1978 and died in 2008.
The class of 2003 – born in 1981 and featuring on the 1999 Mindset list – believed Yugoslavia never existed and were puzzled why Solidarity was sometimes spelled with a capital S. Solidarity was the first and only independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. It was created in 1980 and went on to negotiate a peaceful end to communism in Poland nine years later – making the country the first to escape Moscow’s grip.
The list takes a year to compile, with Mr Nief and Mr McBride gathering outside contributions and poring over journals, literary works and the popular media from the year of the incoming students’ birth.
“We present the ideas to every 18-year-old whose attention we can get and we wait for the ‘mindset moment’ – the blank stare that comes back at you and makes you realise they have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mr Nief says.
Sometimes the list depressingly highlights how little progress has been made on key issues, like the fight against aids.
Mr Nief says in 1982, “aids was found to have killed 164 people and finding a cure for the new disease was designated a ‘top priority for government-sponsored research”.
Apartheid never existed in South Africa for the class of 2006 and for the class of 2007, “Banana Republic has always been a store, not a puppet government in Latin America.
For the class of 2013, boxer Mike Tyson was “always a felon”, but to students who graduated five years earlier, he was “always a contender”.
“There are 25 and 26-year-olds that tell us they feel old when they read the list,” says Mr Nief.
“Just two years ago there were some students who learned to type on a typewriter”.
Mr Nief said some in the class of 2012 didn’t know that IBM had ever made typewriters.
In the class of 2009, few students knew how to tie a tie and weren’t aware Iran and Iraq had ever been at war with each other.
For some getting their bachelor’s degree this year, Germany was never divided, professional athletes have always competed in the Olympics, there have always been reality shows on TV and smoking has never been allowed on US airlines.
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