What's your mindset?

Several years ago I dropped my child off at college. I was all ready for the "let go" speech at orientation, but instead the speaker shared something even more alarming. He shared the Beloit College Mindset List with us. http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/2011.php . The "list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students" entering college, in other words, the world according to an 18 year old. What was striking about it was how many things an 18 year old has never experienced...from the obvious (they never “rolled down” a car window and have always had "bottled water"...) to the more subtle. Here are a few items from the Class of 2011's list: Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre, Fox has always been a major network, Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM, and the World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

Just thinking about the "mindset" of the average K-12 student gave me a shudder. Imagine walking into a school where everything from the textbooks to the technology is so much older than you are???