Atrios brings up the ubiquitous problem of the historical memory of undergraduates:

I spoke in an undergraduate class today. As a friend of mine has said a few times about her students, pretty soon you’re going to have to explain to them what the Lewinsky scandal was. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the students, just that the degree to which 19 year olds have shared cultural and historic experience with me is shrinking fast. Bush v. Gore happened when they were 11. What’s recent history to me is a vague recollection for them.

As I discovered this over the last few years, I dropped 1990s references in my classes. If I make them, I have to give a rather detailed background discussion because they don’t really remember Bill Clinton as president.

In fact, a year or so ago I was responding to a question in class that indirectly brought this subject up (I think it was a question about Johnson’s impeachment) and I said — with my usual measure of heavy sarcasm — something like this:

Oh yeah. That’s right. You’re the kids so many “concerned Americans” were worried about back then. The cry at the time from enemies of Bill Clinton was “What will we tell the children? What will this do to the children?”  Read more