What Do Incoming Freshmen Know?

Every year, Beloit College publishes "a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college". They just published their 11th "Mindset List." Here are a few tidbits:

• Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team
• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• All have had a relative--or known about a friend's relative--who died comfortably at home with Hospice.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
• Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.
• There have always been gay rabbis.
• Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the National Anthem again. (a good thing, IMO)
  
• Their parents may have watched The American Gladiators on TV the day they were born.
• They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
• They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”
• There have always been charter schools.

Read the whole thing here.