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The Mindset of the Incoming College Freshmen
Beloit College has come out with its annual Mindset List of what the incoming class (of 2013) has always known and has never known. "For these students, ... the Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables. They have never used a card catalog to find a book. ... Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible. ... Rap music has always been mainstream. ... Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled. ... Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code."
In my world, Britney Spears has never been featured on a Classic Rock Radio Station.
Dave
thinking about more important things than the Jolly Green Giant.
get off my slashdot.
stuff that matters.
yeah right
hammered as the cubs won it all in 2012.
'The European Union has always existed'.
Hey you kids, get off my lawn!
I remember record players, portable tape players, laptops that weighed a ton, actually having to manage hard drive space. And walking to class backwards in six feet of snow for at least ten miles.
And, no, you don't get your netbook back. You hit it through my window, now its mine.
Ah, the young white trash generation.
...I just told my Electronics 1001 students about the tube testers they used to have at Seven-Eleven. I'll have a 12AU6 and a Slurpee, please. rj
"They have never used a card catalog to find a book"
What's a book?
... and U2 sucks.
America is in trouble. These are the same students who think that all countries along the equator are hotter than any desert in the USA.
Heck, I saw and almost touched snow on one mountain in Africa. Quite a revelation to me...I almost froze!
...with my eyesight failing from old age like this, it's too hard to aim if you're across the street.
Somewhere between reactionary neophilia and reactionary neophobia, there is a sparsely populated middle ground where things are evaluated on their own merits, and new things are not automatically good nor old things automatically bad, or vice versa. The modern predilection for the new is just as robotic and mindless as the pre-modern predilection for tradition, the only difference being that we're now indoctrinated into neophilia by advertising instead of being indoctrinated into neophobia by religion.
Maybe, if we learned from the past instead of ignoring it, we wouldn't feel compelled to reinvent COBOL every thirty years. Then we would have been spared the horror of Visual Basic, and then later, Python. Can't wait to see what the next lumbering reanimated monster from the forgotten past will be.
Oh wait, I can already guess: another implementation of Scheme.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Paper bricks the RIAA will throw at you when they catch you downloading music.
If I was a doctor Id get into tattoo removal asap. These gen Y peeps and their fugly tats will be running to the doctors office when they hit middle age.
"Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled."
The president in the 90s has never inhaled either;)
We had to get our messages by listening to the audio tone over a 300 baud modem and were gratefull . . .
We all die in 2012, so why the study?
The shitty thing is, 2012 is my freshman class year.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
I find it hard to believe that there aren't still a lot of school libraries out there that still use card catalogues. But what do I know.
I think there's at least a 10-year delay between birth and awareness of international politics; the first UK PM I remember John Major
I do remember the excitement we all felt when Salsa was officially the fastest-growing condiment in North America. Heady days, those.
This is interesting. Wiki tells me the first web pages went up in December 1990. Those early days of the web have really moved into the realm of history, albeit recent history.
I don't recall it ever being socially unaccebtable, though I do know it was considered - and is, if you ask me - a stupid thing to do, up there with jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.
Since when is RSVP out of our lexicon? I never got that memo.
Well, the European Community has existed since the 50s; this one's more of a technicality.
And Tianammen Square happened before they were born! Yikes.
I imagine this has been true since the 60s, at least.
As opposed to what? The GNP?
And I bet there's someone on Slashdot who cares! :)
I don't think there were any flat-screen TVs in 1991 - unless you count those flat-glass CRTs, which don't really count.
Hah! I doubt that happens very often.
Quayle had power? Biden has power?
That only became blase in the late 90s, as far as I'm concerned
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Come on, a few trillion dollars in debt handed to the next generation is not a big deal. ;)
20. American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
...
...
...
32. The nation's key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
48. Elite American colleges have never been able to fix the price of tuition.
62. Members of Congress have always had to keep their checkbooks balanced since the closing of the House Bank.
I genuinely can't imagine a world before this stuff happened...
Yes I'll get off your lawn, but let me absorb some of your wisdom before I go.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I attended Beloit, I think before they came up with the mindset list. The computer was fed with punch cards to program in Fortran I think. It was located in the basement of 1890's former science building (now the student union). Any other alum's read slashdot?
I'm extrapolating from the 2002 list, which is the oldest one and for the class that was born the year after I was. Many of the things they claimed people of that age never experienced or were too young for, I knew about back then.
Granted, I'm a little sharper than the average, but it was just /full/ of inaccuracies. I don't expect this list to be all that much better.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It's just a different genre of mindless grunting.
We're fucked and we've fucked their future. I don't think that one's on the list, but, I'm guessing, it's something any bright grad will know.
Are you fucking kidding me? They've got another 4 years and $95,000 worth of debt to rack up before they sue the college for not being handed a six-figure salary WITH their diploma. Yeah, talk about a fucked system.
IMHO, we haven't begun to see fucked yet, with the ignorance that MTV likes to portray as the Real World. Let's hope there are still some out there who still see the morality of the world today AND are bright enough to see that we have more than ONE political party out there.
Even though every single one of those statements are true, there are still many variations of personality and character. It's just a different setting for the same plot. Much less than a mindset, more like meaningless ramble of facts.
I'd rather search for the answers than just ask the questions.
... still - on the the bright side - at least we got fucked....
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
Soon they will also be people who only remember when Fermat's Last Theorem was a solved problem, not one of the great mysteries told to young kids interested in mathematics. I've worked for a few years teaching number theory to highschool students and it came as a shock when I realized that I was teaching some students who had actually been born after Andrew Wiles had proved Fermat's Last Theorem. The proof of FLT was one of the defining moments in my mathematical childhold. And in a year or two, those kids will in college. There really isn't any simple problem that has the same wonderful history to rope kids into doing math by looking really easy and yet having such a convoluted and romantic history. Even the oldest two unsolved problems in mathematics (whether there are any odd perfect numbers and whether there are infinitely many even perfect numbers) don't have the same sort of romance to them: No one ever claimed they had a beautiful proof of these. Ok, someone now go ahead and mark this an off-topic ramble by an old-codger...
I also take umbrage with some of their other points, like "Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa."
We used to have NYNEX (the New England Baby Bell) for telephone. (Hell, I think I still have a NYNEX umbrella somewhere...) TV was from an antenna on the roof. (It only came down when we had our hose re-roofed, about three years ago.) Internet access, when we got it, was dial-up (see NYNEX).
Nnnnnnnno. We only just got an HDTV a year or two ago. I'd hardly heard of it before that.
I'll give them this one. I hadn't even heard of it.
Seriously, what sort of article is this? The "generation" this story so fondly speaks of accounts for a pretty significant portion of the /. crowd.
I quote, "What's wrong withe status quo? It works for me!"
Argh.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
blaming postmodernism for the results of a 30 year assault on the education system in this country is simply intellectually dishonest.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
adding to my last post.. of course someone who was complicit in that 30 year assault on our education system would also be exactly the type of person to use the term "postmodernist" in that fashion..
assuming that i am correct in that then...
you're blaming postmodernist for the results of the campaign against public education that you waged - you're complaining about the exact affects you WANTED to have biting you in the ass and displacing that blame on the group you constantly attack.
Assuming that i'm correct in making an educated guess at your beliefs based on your pulling a term out of thin air to demonize.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Based on the headline and the fact that I was not in the idle section I expected this to be some sort of examination of incoming freshmen' opinions on things like education, drugs, and sex. Of course the article is instead just a collection of celebrity trivia and popular culture from the past twenty years.
What the fuck? What is this bullshit? This is not "news". Put this shit back in Idle, or better yet, give it back to Oprah where it belongs.
"There have always been flat screen televisions"
"Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister"
These statements are not a function of one's age, nor are they true as is. Is the author trying to say that we've got a group passing through that is so self-centered that they refuse to acknowledge any event prior to their birth? I was born in the 80s, but I know it's false to say "Winston Churchill has always been a former prime minister" or "CRT screens have always existed".
But why point out just the local generation gap? Why didn't the author include "The US has always been a country" or "There has always been written language"? How about "Earth has always had approximately 24 hour rotations" or "The atmosphere has always been about 20% oxygen"?
Then at the top are lines like "Members of the class of 2013 won't be surprised when they can charge a latte on their cell phone and curl up in the corner to read a textbook on an electronic screen.".... nor should anyone who has recently left the cave. Hell, the first guy I knew that got an eReader was in his 60s. You're not excused from observing your surroundings just because you've made it to (or past) middle-aged.
I'm writing this article off as a failed attempt at promoting ageism.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
I'm not sure why this isn't in the Idle section, or if this is "News" or a giant troll, if it isn't then you old timers are the real disappointment.
If it is a troll, then I fell for this bait but I had to let his out...
Let's go through a few of these...
"They have never used a card catalog to find a book." Yes, let's NOT use the advancements in databases and instant relational lookups....
"They have never had to âoeshake downâ an oral thermometer." Yes, please go back to using toxic mercury for nostalgia's sake.
"Rap music has always been main stream." So? We never stopped you from listening to whatever music you grew up with, quit being condescending on our childhood.
"Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code." Should we know smoke signals as well?
"Someone has always been asking: âoeWas Iraq worth a war?â" Yea, I'm sure Vietnam wasn't an issue when you guys were going through college through the Hippy years.
"Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them." You can't blame us for this, it's not our fault advances happened so rapidly in our times, whereas going from Mono to Stereo was the big thing in yours...
Your nostalgia's great and all, it just gets damned annoying when it starts being condescending....
I shall part with the following from your generation...
"UP YOURS!"
As a upcoming freshmen let me make a few points. 3. The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables. Shrek came out in 2001. I remember part of the first 11 years of my life. Including the Jolly Green Giant (not much but enough to never call Shrek the green giant). 4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book. My first Elementary School had one, so did the public library back then. 8. Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible. That's pretty regional, it is only in the last few years they have caught on where I live 19. They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P. Send a Reply/Confirmation? 21. Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled. ??? 27. Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap. Not in my school(s). 44. There have always been flat screen televisions. Maybe, but how many people had them earlier in the 90's (my childhood). 51. Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations. She didn't really become popular till the late 90s. How'd she get on classics for my entire life when she didn't start until halfway through it? 53. Someone has always been asking: "Was Iraq worth a war?" They're gonna be asking that a long time. 54. Most communities have always had a mega-church. I let this slide because they used "most".
A PDF reader than can only display a single PDF file. It is immune to rm but is difficult to back up and doesn't have a search feature.
"you have died of dysentery"
As well as MS-DOS and the Apple II.
They don't truly know what Cc. stands for on an e-mail. Even if they do know it stands for the words "carbon copy" they don't know what a carbon copy is.
Of course this has been true for quite a few years.
FYI. Clickable links by years: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and probably more in the future (just change the year number in the URLs).
I wished it had older years. Are there any similiar ones online from other sources?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
.. Oh yeah. That's right. I don't.
Every one starts anew, the same way. What a surprise.
They say that "Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled", but that confuses me. Obviously this is a reference to Clinton, but Bush was a well-known druggie and drunk. Am I to believe that he commonly snorted coke off of coeds' naked bodies and drove drunk, but never puffed a joint? I suppose that is possible, but I find it hard to believe.
Serious question: When was the GDP not the key indicator of the national economy? (I'm ten years older than these freshmen.)
> "They have never used a card catalog to find a book"
Yawn. I was a UM Freshman in 1992. At that point, I think the card catalog was still there, but there were OLD, tattered signs perched on top warning that it was no longer maintained (and apparently hadn't been maintained in years). My high school library had a card catalog, but that was because it sucked. The public library downtown had greenscreen terminals since middle school.
What does having been born in 1973 imply?
* We never understood why our parents got so excited by seeing moonwalkers on TV. Men had *always* been walking on the moon.
* We didn't notice the videogame crash of 1983, because we'd all moved on and gotten Commodore 64s for Christmas anyway. Six years later, shopping for Amiga toyz, it blew our minds that there were STILL stores selling stuff for the Atari 2600, even though we still thought the Colecovision and Vectrex were kind of cool in their own way.
* NES? Yawn. Amiga rulez. Well, ok... Sonic on the Genesis is kind of cool...
* A *Gameboy*?!? (Retch. Retch. Vomit.) They're for teenyboppers and poor kids. (pulls out Lynx)
* Sprites were invented for programming convenience.
* You mean assemblers weren't *always* two-pass?
* We learned binary by drawing 8x8 grids, writing "256 | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1" over them, coloring in the squares where we wanted the pixel to be non-transparent, then added up the numbers above each row's darkened squares and added another DATA statement with 8 values separated by commas to define our custom characters.
* Unix was lame. It was like PCs, but worse, because at least PCs had primitive color and shitty games. Linux didn't become interesting until the internet and web servers made it relevant.
* When picking a foreign language to study in high school and/or college, German was the obvious choice. Spanish might have been practical, and French was the language of love, but German was the language of zer0daywar3z.
* We pissed off our parents by running a fake BBS off the family phone line for a week so we could spend more on a US Robotics HST 9600 baud modem than some of our friends paid for their first *cars*... and smile, because we were getting them for less than half price with the sysop discount.
* Every high school had at least one really, really insanely rich kid who put a car battery and rigged-up car phone in his locker his freshman year so he could act cool and call his answering machine at home between classes to check his messages. By 12th grade, it was officially forbidden by the school, and he got a detention the day his shiny new brick rang in history class.
* People around campus pointed at you, and called you "the laptop guy" because you had a 12-pound luggable in your backpack that was *almost* powerful enough to run WordPerfect for DOS without too much lag... as long as there was a power outlet nearby.
Now all they have time for is reading and math. And not really math, but memorization and defined, structured motions of arithmetic functions. What is the point of "reading" when no one is learning how to write, or think critically, or imagine? An memorized functions will only help so far when the real problem is not defined and you have to generate the formulas.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I believe we should have a hunting season on isms (ists), there's far too many of them and they need to be culled. ;) Have you read Damasio's books? Just as a different way of looking back at the blank stares.
ideopath @ play
"What's wrong with the status quo? It works for me!"
You're much more likely to hear Status Quo than Britney Spears on a classic rock channel.
Squirrel!
Jesus Christ, *how old are you* person who wrote these questions? I'm 37, and state abbreviations for postage haven't had punctuation in them for most of my lifetime either. I can remember because we had to be able to address an envelope as part of a 5th-grade competency test. And card catalogs were about 75 percent computerized at my high school by the time I graduated.
As far as I'm concerned, ALL people should at least know "SOS" in Morse code. Never know when your only source of communication might be a monotone audio source in an emergency situation. (such as the microphone on your cell phone not working after an accident)
Defective Logic
yeah but ppl of 20 or so probally don't remember the old skool pc's with tapes in stead of floppys, and a lot wil even not remember floppys, especially the big oldskool ones. They will not know all the DOS commands we learned, they don't remember the Wolfenstein 3D or Duke Nukem as revolutionairy games, the first 3D games (kind of actually). They are not used to the dial in interent wich costed a lot per minute for a 32kps connection.
they probally also don't know the audio cassette, maybe they know vinyl records (something for dj's), for them a mobile phone is a light phone wich you can carry in your pockets (my first mobile was to big and heavy for that), they don't remember the time before internet where you got to tape music from the radio or cd's to have illigal copies of music. ect ect ...
When I was a college freshman in the early 1970s, this was our world:
Cell phones did not exist, although most doctors had some type of telephone in their cars.
Home computers and on-line banking and on-line shopping did not exist. Text messaging did not exist. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter did not exist (I still don't know what they are).
Some of the older telephones still were the rotary phones, where we had to dial the number. We could hear the pulse type dialing being used. The newer phones probably had the buttons and tones, by then. If we dialed 0, by itself, we could talk to the operator. If I am not mistaken, we still had to pay extra, on our monthly bill, for each extra telephone in the house.
Typewriters were used to type letters. Some were electric and some were purely mechanical.
Many secretaries knew how to take dictation by shorthand.
Slide rules were frequently used by engineers and scientists to perform addition, subtraction, roots, logarithms and trigonometry. Pocket calculators did not exist. However, adding machines did exist.
Nearly all of the appliances that we owned were controlled by mechanical knobs and levers. It was more of an analog world, although large businesses did have computers.
Many businesses still used punched cards to store data for computer databases.
We were being encouraged to used trans fats instead of saturated fats because they were supposedly less dangerous than saturated fats. Now we are being told that trans fats are even worse.
Cars needed a minor tune up every 6,000 miles and a major tuneup every 12,000 miles. Engines usually needed to be overhauled at about 100,000 miles. Most of our gasoline powered cars had carburetors. To start a car when it was cold, we had to pump the gas peddle several times first. On some older cars, we also still had to use a mechanical choke.
Police cars could do about 140 MPH and policemen carried revolvers instead of pistols.
I hoped I would not be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Fortunately, the war was winding down by then, an few people were drafted that year.
AIDs did not exist and I had never even heard of herpes, until several years later.
If a young person asked the barber to not cut his hair too short, the barber frequently cut it somewhat shorter than he wanted anyway (for some reason). Eventually barbers stopped doing that.
In many states our social security number was used as our drivers license number. Grocery stores would not accept credit cards, so we usually paid by check. When writing a check at the grocery store or elsewhere, the cashier or clerk usually wrote our driver's license number on the back of our check. Over the decades, many thousands of people have seen my driver's license number and written it on the back of my thousands of checks.
Compiling lists such as the Beloit College Annual Mindset List is in itself 20th century old-think about large collections of people like the baby boomer generation. Did they ever heard about concepts like the long tail? No one likes generalizations, which are applied to himself (as many posts above) point out.
This is rather presumptuous - I consider myself having a decent knowledge of American culture (for someone that is not American), and for around 1 in 4 of the statements, I don't even know what they are talking about!
Also,
There have always been flat screen televisions.
Rather try "There have always been color televisions." I was born in 1985 and I have known black-and-white TV.
Some do indeed have a search feature. It's typically at the end of the file.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
You had me until the last two. In my high-school, that guy would have have been beaten up and stuffed in a locker with his battery.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
I'm pretty sure people don't listen to Slayer to hear Araya's vocal stylings.
As a student, I say, fuck that, my dear academic, and fuck your easy willingness to give up on us. We clueless, cynical, little automatons have been tasked with developing our own frameworks for filtering and handling information blasted at us from society's great unmetered firehose even as you sit there whining on Slashdot about your abject failure to connect with us. We, the post-post-modern twerps that you are griping about, have grown up DRENCHED in information, to the point that we're numbed to it. We have not experienced the type of developmental cocoons that previous generations wore into adulthood; we didn't grow up in a crappy town where our best sources of information were an out-of-date encyclopedia, Time magazine, and the evening news. We grew up with Internet access and a TV in our bedroom, and we realized at quite a young age that most of the ideas we thought we were alone in having were actually shared by countless thousands or millions. It's discouraging to the thinker, really; quite often, the instant we have a thought, we type it into Google and realize that the discussion is not merely mature, but closed. We realized early on that we were not alone, yet nobody cared what we had to say.
I can say, without specific knowledge of your field, that your job is fundamentally two pronged: it is the promotion of the best approximation of reality available, and it is also the displacement of the less accurate models which came before. Modernism/postmodernism had an important job to do, and retains some importance as a perspective, a naggling doubt at the back of every good student's mind, but it's beginning to reach saturation in my own, younger generation. The holdouts who haven't either digested the pill to the best of their abilities or passed it through their system are getting rare outside of some fairly recognizable enclaves. It's time to react to that fact. We young people have been told to ask "why?" as a reflex, true, but many of us have unfortunately developed the habit of making snap judgments in the face of informational overload. We have no authorities; we have no role models. The politicians are liars; the businessmen are crooks; the priests are pedophiles. We never learned about righteousness and values; we were taught consumerism and encouraged to swim in knowledge as if we would learn by mere proximity. We are three generations removed from the cultural revolutions of the sixties and seventies. Our grandparents were at Woodstock enjoying sex, drugs, and rock and roll; our parents grew up shaking their heads at the hypocrisy of their suddenly-reactionary baby boomer parents, and now we, their kids, don't know what the hell to think. They say that it takes three generations to breed accent out of spoken language; we've left respect for authority so far behind us that we can't even conceive what the fuss was about.
Our childhood is getting longer, as is our adolescence, although we were exposed to the facts of life as soon as we could reach a keyboard. It seems that college is no longer a privilege, but a right awarded for simply not screwing up massively in life. Many of us arrive with no specific goal in mind, expecting to have our hands held as they were in high school, and we often wind up with a degree in hand and no plans for its use. Alternately, many of us believe (often correctly) that our future employers care little about what is taught in college and that simply completing the routine is what matters. The reasoners, the deep thinkers, and those interested in pursuing science for its own sake are in there too, but we've always been there, Mr. Academic. Our deep-thinking minds have always been attracted to the college atmosphere, but those of us with that mindset make up a proportionally smaller fragment of the new student body. You, sir, are in a situation where you need to search diligently for the part of that scholastically-minded fragment that's interested in learning, but afraid to step forth; the ones that have been repeatedly abused or isolated
That girl worked hard (on her knees, every day...) to earn that title and go down in history as the official White House presidential cocksucker.
Just cause you hate Bush, that does NOT give you the right to take that away from her.
The real mindset of incoming college freshmen: Our parents are totally gone! Let's party, get drunk, and find someone to sleep with!
And that has been the mindset of at least a significant percentage of incoming freshmen for decades. Stuff like "OMG, technology changes" doesn't have anywhere near the same effect. Why are these guys concentrating on what divides current college kids from previous generations as opposed to what unites them?
I am officially gone from
n/t
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I was a UM Freshman in 1992... We learned binary by drawing 8x8 grids, writing "256 | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1" over them
I was a Mississippi State freshman in 1979, and we still could only fit "128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1" above an 8x8 grid. I hope to God that your UM was Ole Miss!
^^^ Argh. That's what rushing to do a final post before going to bed does to you. Yeah, the leftmost column was 128, not 256 (goes to cut eye holes in brown paper bag) ;-)
Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap. When I was in grade school in the 70's, and high school in the early 80's, Columbus was still considered a heroic figure in mainstream middle class society. Still is if you're Italian.
That only became blase in the late 90s Which was 10 years ago. When these freshmen were 8 years old.
Best Slashdot Co
I was 10 years older than most of my fellow students. Talking after class I mentioned going to the local drugstore to use the tube tester. Pretty female classmate from Linear Algebra asks "What's a vacuum tube?"
Best Slashdot Co
When I first went to college. I learned how to use a slide rule in high school in the early 80's.
Best Slashdot Co
For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
WRONG. Dr. Seuss will live forever.
It's like when Jim Henson died, and the media wrung their hands over how to explain to children that Kermit the Frog died. What kind of parent would tell a child such an abominable lie? It's a shame that an artistic genius like Jim Henson died so young, but his creations live on.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes, I was never sure if the previous president liked to snort or inject, but I guess neither of those things is inhaling.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
From a classmate at a panel discussion in law school: "We're the most powerful country in the world. Why bother to use diplomacy?" The speaker replied that it wasn't quite as stupid a question as it sounded.
Sent from my iPhone
Do you think this incredibly inaccurate opinion belongs on Slashdot?
What are you, some kind of Damasioist?
Wow. If I had mod points today, I'd use them. Sadly, the best I can do is write this post with a recommendation that someone mod the parent up. It's quite a dense little rant, but I have to say that it's one of the most enlightening and insightful posts I've read on /. in a long time.
Thanks, AC (now git off mah lawn!).
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Not only do they not know what hardcore and softcore porn means, they also don't know what it means to nuke something (in the microwave)
You are right, it is a fucked system. I would think investing $95,000 and four years of effort should result in some sort of return. This person you are yelling about is going to have a house payment following them for 10 or 20 years. It is a house payment they can't avoid, either through bankruptcy or just dodging the payment. It is a house payment that can be garnished out of wages. We call education an investment, but if you had investments like this in the financial world you would end up with a case like Bernie Madoff.
I assume you are advocating the Republican Party, since the majority of today's youth went Democratic in the last election. Let's look at that. First, the Republican's nominated someone for president old enough to be the great grandfather of some of today's freshmen voters. The much talked about "Young Republicans" elected a 38 year old person accused of blatant racism as their leader. That is the Republican youth organization? If you are complaining about the poltical leanings of today's youth, then you need to look what the Republican Party looks like to a young, racially diverse generation that grew up with technology as part of their daily lives. Twenty years ago Intel released the 80486 processor. I remember owning a 386, 286 and yes an 8088. Their world is not the same as yours. An eighteen year old, for instance, has never known a world before The Simpsons, since it was first shown in 1989. They have always had mobile game systems, since the Gameboy was first produced in 1989.
The Republican Party is a party of older, reactionary people who seem to be filled with fear. The accusations of racism sticks really easily to the Party, especially when you consider that McCain voted against the creation of the Martin Luther King Jr, and supported its revocation years later. I can't tell you just how many times I have heard jokes about watermelons in the white house since that election, but it is depressingly all too common among the white conservatives in Texas. Why do you think the youth went over to the Democratic Party?
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
what I do is try and get them to think.
That's good. One source of pride in my college is that essentially all of my professors in the "soft" subjects tried to get us to think, not just to agree with them. And I never ran into any who confused those two goals.
I quote, "What's wrong withe status quo? It works for me!"
For instance, if I had asked a question and made a statement like this, the professors who were trying to get me to think would have answered the question and then asked me for more details on the statement. Occasionally their answers would change my mind or their questions would help me change theirs, but in any instance we'd both learn something from the exchange. Even among my most liberal professors, I never got to meet the stereotypical ivory tower dweller who thinks it's self-evident that a "status quo" is an inherently bad thing and that there is no wisdom in being conservative when proposing to change a working system.
For that, I guess I have to go to Slashdot. Nice to meet you.
http://www.xkcd.com/623/
Amateur radio operators, sorry too close to a useful hobby.
Greg
Morse code. We needed to know the International Code. Morse was used on landlines. It's similar, but has a number of differences. You still have to pass a minimal, 5 words per minute, code test to operate on HF (Shortwave).
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
IMHO, we haven't begun to see fucked yet, with the ignorance that MTV likes to portray as the Real World. Let's hope there are still some out there who still see the morality of the world today AND are bright enough to see that we have more than ONE political party out there.
And then they won't bother with elections because unlike American Idol, you only get one vote, and you can't cast it from a cell phone :-)
And I thought the big movement right now was to stamp out profiling... how naive I was...
Yeah, well maybe they don't know how to spell either. Nor would they bother starting a paragraph with a capital letter, let alone a simple sentance. They likely think that things like "ppl", "probally", and "costed" are words too.
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Ye gods! We've actually been visited by a THREE DIGIT ID! How many feet of cobwebs are YOU trailing, old timer? And what hoary tomb did you crawl out of to inflict your will upon this dark earth? Does this mean that we could possibly be visited by a *GASP!* TWO DIGIT ID Methuselah!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Since we don't have a "+1, awesome rant!" mod, somebody give this AC an "insightful".
/or as all you kids with your iphones that play hippity-hop music and your tattoos of 4chan memes would say: "OMG EPIC WIN!"
//Now, off the lawn please.
0 1 - just my two bits
Alas, I have no mod points.
This was a well put together response to the typical whining academic. As a student now back in college at the tender age if 38, I can recognize the dismissive tone with which college professors have approached students and to my lack of surprise it hasn't changed since I first touched a college campus when I was 17.
The fact is, most people in college are going because without that piece of paper, they are screwed. It doesn't matter whether they learn, it only matters that when their resume hits the inbox of the human resources department, it states that there is a college degree. It doesn't really even matter if the degree matches the job you are applying for.
That sad truth, that the degree you study for doesn't make a difference in the REAL world, is why you have students looking at you with blank stares. You want them to look at education as some sort of mystical mind opening experience. It isn't. They know, as you should no doubt be aware, Mr. Academic, that only the piece of paper really matters. That piece of paper is why they are mortgaging their future, betting an insane amount of money on the fact that the piece of paper your college gives them will enable them to live a life of prosperity. The few out there going to college for the love of learning are to be both praised and condemned. They should be praised for approaching the chance to learn with reverence, and they should be condemned for not approaching college realistically.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Entitlement.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Duke Nukem Forever has always been an upcoming title they have looked forward to.
Hmmm.... sounded like "Mr. Academic" was distinctly saying he had not "given up" on the current generation, but that he was finding it even harder to "get through" to his students than in previous years.
It sounds as if "Mr. Academic" was reflecting his frustrating experience, possibly due in part to how he has changed, and partly due to the changes in the attitudes and interests from those he faced when he started his job. This is why it's good that there are new generations of teachers to complement older ones in universities.
Meanwhile, you can improve on this eloquently worded, long-winded, over-generalized, citation-free, and condescending rant. There are some good thoughts here. I expect you'll develop a more focused, compelling style that with a bit of experience.
I'm still locked up in my locker, you insensitive clod!
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
mod up please
I'm in mid thirties, and just learned more in one post about the generation following mine than in a full year of TV watching, net reading and discussing with other people. Thank you for making this thread relevant. I'd mod you up if I wasn't such a karma whore by having posted before in the thread.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
To the cutting point of the bleeding edge, your intellect is a weapon, the most potent weapon you now have. Learn to use it as a concealed weapon. Your post suggests someone in their 30s or even older, but if you really are a young student and as bright as your post suggests you to be then 'welcome to the arena'. I've had my face busted open, head broken open, bones broken, been groped and worse, and, I'm a middle class brat with a genius level IQ. Take the soother out of your mouth, get off the E and learn to take multiple punches. It can only get worse.
ideopath @ play
Death and thrash metal (including Slayer) are both incredibly intricate and demanding styles of music.
I agree. Trying to write good underground metal (death metal, thrash, speed metal, black metal -- Slayer is in my lexicon a speed/death hybrid) is not as simple as people want it to be.
Here's a good definition of how underground metal is similar to classical music in composition and values.
Futurist Traditionalism
"What's wrong withe status quo? It works for me!"
Change for the sake of change isn't a good thing. I think you have to actually answer the question. Most things in most people's lives do work for them just fine, especially in the short term. I think the question deserves an answer.
I don't even know what "empty irony" is supposed to mean, but cluelessness is not a new thing. I don't really believe in the whole "kids these days" bullshit. People have always been dumb and lazy. I think it's just easier now, which is nice since I'm dumb and lazy.
Huh? Anyone?
So the war started in 1991?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
... still - on the the bright side - at least we got fucked....
Yeah, except it was in the ass. With a wooden pole.
I mean, I suppose you could be in to that sort of thing, but I am not.
I have not and will not give up. I'm actually one of "the good guys" in this, in that I have absolute faith that the people I am teaching can think and think well, if given the proper time, tools, place, and encouragement.
I'm sure that if you were one of my students, I would be happy and proud to have you around. You are correct in that there are always some students who are willing and happy to push things intellectually. They are always a steady 15% or so. The problem is the middle and the bottom. The middle is shrinking. Over the past 10 years, the number of willfully ignorant students has increased dramatically, all at the expense of the middle ground - the students who are bright enough, but poorly served and unwillfully ignorant, i.e., they don't "know" because they simply don't know, as opposed to the bottom feeders who don't know and don't want to know and are in school to punch a ticket. They piss me off.
Even still, I do reach out to them all as best I can, but there is always a certain number of them who are categorically useless. So, I do my best to cultivate the ones at the top who care, and enlist the ones in the middle who might care.
Again, thanks for your well thought response. It was an inspiration to read. Cheers,
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It seems now-a-days I see a lot of nicely done full/half sleeves on hipster kids. I guess that's what they are talking about - the chic tattoos. That's one sort of tattoo. I also see some not so well done, a bit faded, and far less contrived tattoos on people about my age (I'm 36). I think is says something about these people. When I think of my old tats, I think about the kid who got them. Impulsive, adventurous, rebellious, self destructive, optimistic. The kid who would try *anything*. Today I'm a research scientists - theoretical physical chemistry. Life is very tame. No more drugs, slumming, hitchhiking, crazy girls, chaotic times. I'm marked up from those days, and I don't regret any of it. When I see other folks with their faded tats I think they are probably like me. Definitely not chic, though.
46 & 2
Yup, here's hoping those youngins don't have closed minds that over generalize their ignorant opinions to entire groups of people. We already have you to do that.
It was pussy, booze, video games and in fairly distant fourth was school. Everything else fell into the irrelevant or no time for that crap pile.
because that was quite funny.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Because their parents suck, politically-correct panty-waisted fools....
Wait wait wait. "Politically-correct" parents are responsible for kids growing up thinking that the sort of behavior seen on Jerry Springer was normal? "Politically-correct" parents would let their kids watch South Park?
I mention this only because you repeated the error of your parent post (and there has been a rash of this mistake on Slashdot stories in the past few weeks): there is no hyphen in "politically correct". Indeed, there should be no such thing as an adverb with an "-ly" ending being immediately followed by a hyphen ever. The "-ly" adverb has taken the job of the hyphen, so the hyphen is redundant. It is one of the few hard and fast rules of English.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled arguments over trivial matters.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
What's a book?
It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should 'ave one.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
But it does have a built in screen and instant access time.
Learn something new.
Wow! Was that your college essay? That was good enough to get you into an elite school. That was amazingly perceptive. Submit that to the New Yorker or the USA Today College edition...
Of course popular music (including Slayer) is crap.
Growling into a microphone and thrashing a guitar is neither intricate nor demanding. Any monkey can do it.
Fuel was half the price, as well.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
It's a bit odd of me since I'm close to 50 now but I actually finished college recently. I have found my classmates (as of 2005) neither shallow, self absorbed or otherwise thoughtless any more than that of the generation that went to school in the '70s or '80s. If you want to connect with them be clear, honest and sincere and the connection, if there is to be one, will come. The technology changes all the time but the motivations and needs of people really don't. The youth of today is really not that much different than we were then. The only real differences are the circumstances in which they have grown up in.
According to TFA, it is simultaneously true that this year's stock of freshers is both "multicultural" and "They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P."
While I wouldn't require strong French as an indication of being "multicultural", this does seem to be a bit of a non-sequiteur. Ooops, there I go again. But some phrases get so absorbed into one native language that they acquire a certain je ne sais quoi, and their understanding simply becomes part of the host language. It's particularly so between French and English because of the actions of a Scandanavian bastard almost a thousand years ago.
So, essentially what the article is saying is that students going to college this year can be expected to be ignorant, if not necessarily stupid. Well, DOH!, but isn't that why they're going to college?
Hmmm, do I brush up on my Spanish first, or my French, or my Russian? The wife wants to move once #1 daughter gets her digit out and moves out, but we haven't decided which country to move to. Oh well, no great hurry.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
THIS.