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Most US Students Think Beethoven Is a Dog
According to a new survey you can add Beethoven to the list of things that college freshmen should know about, but don't. In addition to thinking that the great composer was a dog, the class of 2014 can't write in cursive, thinks email is too slow, and is sure Michelangelo is a computer virus.
... but Apple and Blackberry turn out to originally be kinds of fruit. Jeez, who'd have thought.
He's a mutant ninja turtle!
Beethoven is a dog, Michelangelo is a virus, email is too slow, and why the hell do you need to be able to write in cursive when you can type much faster and typing is much more legible? So why are you criticizing these young whipper-snappers... it's not as if they are standing on your lawn!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Most of it doesn't indicate a mindset, it points towards lack of knowledge. What's cool and what's in differs from generation to generation, facts don't. Berlin wall happened a long time ago and I know about it. I do know who Beethoven is. What points towards a mindset is that others find me weird because I listen to Beethoven, Mozart, Pink Floyd and Nirvana. I'm in my early twenties, btw. May be the younger generation needs to work on the near past history then?
Folks, I was shocked enough by this to RTFA, and it is simply a list of things that have been true or change significantly since 1992, the year the current incoming freshman class was born. #58 says "Beethoven has always been a dog." This means that the movie came out in 1992 and thus all of these students are familiar with the name in the dog context. The list does not imply that any (let alone most) students think he is exclusively a dog. The writers of the list did not take a survey and ask a question like, "Who or what is Beethoven?" They just noted that the movie came out in 1992. So no, these freshman do not necessarily think that Beethoven is a dog instead of a composer, and I am sure this is not the case. The movie just wasn't popular enough...