Seasoned—not necessarily senior—faculty members are often disappointed to discover that their cultural anecdotes, milestones, and general reference points are often utterly unknown to younger students. Cultural terms often creep into class discussions regardless of the instructional discipline, so it's healthy to ask if…well, the students can relate to what the teacher in front of the class is talking about. The ignorance works both ways, of course. Bring up the subject of music, for instance, and many older folks are in store for a lesson in humility and impressive minutiae from students.
Any consideration of "general" knowledge is necessarily distinct from more common pedagogical discussions on the value of reading, writing, mathematics and so forth. Such "general" information seems to relate more to the humanities and liberal arts—areas of knowledge that don't get very much attention these days.
As as small but timely example, young people reportedly don't get their news of the world from TV broadcasts. For validation all you have to do is examine the commercials. Marketing experts are very adept at targeting customers, and those watching the news (both network and cable) are apparently interested primarily in drugs that purport to cure, or at least provide relief from, the sundry afflictions of older Americans. We needn't enumerate those products here, but let's just say the average 18-year old isn't interested.
Young people are learning about the world, but from other sources—online and from each other. We all certainly hope so anyway, since democracy may depend upon it. At any rate, the audience for TV news is getting older and smaller, and the former must drive the latter, absent any pharmaceutical miracles from those who pay for the commercials. In practical terms this means that college professors who refer to current events in class, as reported on TV, are likely to hear crickets chirping in response.
The relentless demise of printed newspapers is a whole other story, but ditto in terms of the generational impact.
Some commentators have speculated that Google and other search engines are snuffing out so-called "general" knowledge altogether. If you are near a keyboard and the Internet, you can look up any random factoid of, say, a geographical or historical nature, that may be required. Or perhaps it's just something that has aroused your curiosity. In fact there is an entire article on this subject, entitled, "Is Google Killing General Knowledge" in Intelligent Life, a British publication. We have all looked up facts we thought we knew when the neurons weren't firing properly. However, there may be a difference between looking up the director of "The Maltese Falcon" and seeking to find out where Alabama is.
Now, about those college freshmen: Each August since 1998, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the highly popular Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college, and is the creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the humanities Tom McBride and emeritus public affairs director Ron Nief. The list is cited around the world as the school year begins, as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for a new generation. It is widely reprinted and the Mindset List Web site, at http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/, receives more than 300,000 hits annually, according to the college.
It is certainly worth a look, even though the statistical "profile" of community college students represents an older cohort than those likely to attend Beloit.
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