Hello:
It's that time of year when, posted in various faculty workrooms and on
various listservs I am seeing that witty treatise on how "different" todays
college students are from us - how students born in the 1980's don't remember
Ronald Reagan, Bob Dylan, don't care about the Vietnam War, have grown up
with the Internet etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseaum.
I am hoping not to see that treatise on this list this year. For one thing,
it's constructed mainly of stereotypes, for another thing, it serves no
useful purpose except to increase our feeling that we are so very different
from our students, like "they are from Mars and we are from Venus." And it
is (almost) purely a matter of perspective.
If a visitor from 6 centuries before or after our era were to violate the
known physical laws of the universe and visit us, his or her comparison of
those born in the 1950s and those born in the 1980s would reveal very little
difference indeed. That person would pretty much see all those born in the
late 20th C as similar except in the most trivial ways (i.e. type of rock
music, minor changes in clothing.)
As the new school year begins, I hope we can think about our own time spent
as students, and maybe use that knowledge to better understand and serve our
students. After all, as Pogo said "They is Us."
Nancy Melucci
LACCD
