Last Sunday, I spent a pleasant hour with a group of genial ladies in my church. All of them were old enough - or nearly old enough - to be my mother and, like my mother, they have been models of womanhood, servanthood and citizenship.

The president of the group announced that new officers had been selected - OK, rounded up - for the coming year. Everyone had been cooperative. “And we did it all by telephone,” she said, pride ringing in her voice. “Nobody had to get dressed and go to a meeting.”

We all laughed at that, and I allowed that my generation now does most of its business by e-mail. The older ladies seemed appropriately impressed with my modernity.

Then Tuesday, I read the newest “Mindset List” from Beloit College. It points out that students entering college this fall, the class of 2014, think e-mail is just too slow.

To today’s texters and twitterers, my generation’s dependence on e-mail is quaint, bordering on prehistoric.

Of course, to them “Barney” is prehistoric. And purple.

To them, Beethoven has always been a dog, and Michelangelo first came to their attention as a computer virus.

The annual Beloit list has become something of a media sensation. It’s shocking - and somewhat depressing - to realize that most of today’s college freshmen don’t know how to write in cursive and have never talked on a phone that had a cord - unless they were visiting their grandparents.

Attention-getting aside, the list has a practical purpose. It’s supposed to help professors - many of them at least 40 and therefore old enough to be considered “geezers” by their students - recognize the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of the young men and women whose flip-flopped feet soon will march into their classrooms.

Professors need to understand, for example, that for their students, J.R. Ewing has always been dead. So have Benny Hill, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins.

The class of 2014 may not “get” jokes about potato being spelled “potatoe,” because Dan Quayle was out of the news before their time. To them, “Go West” means Asia, not California.

They don’t remember a time when Ruth Bader Ginsberg wasn’t on the Supreme Court, John McEnroe wasn’t retired and Jack Kevorkian was licensed to practice medicine.

This lack of knowledge doesn’t represent failure on their parts. Truth is, every generation has minimal understanding of things that went out before they came in.

What’s different is that nowadays, change comes faster than you can say, well, nowadays. There’s been both an explosion of information and a revolution instant communication devices, and the result is less and less common ground from one generation to the next.

(That’s not altogether new, of course. My generation was raised to think “you can’t trust anyone over 30.” Now we strain to believe that “60 is the new 40.”)

The great danger, of course, is that any given generation will fail to pass along those things that are critical. The things that made America great. The things that make America, well, America.

But the short term challenge is how to communicate effectively with a generation that has never worn wristwatches. With a generation for whom Czechoslovika never existed and for whom secondhand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

And it’s not just professors who face the problem. You’ve probably faced it, too.

I know I did, the time I was asked to speak to the local Youth Leadership class graduation. Somewhere near the beginning, I delivered a line that had always gone over well with adult audiences.

“I don’t have any great insights of my own, but I’ll share a saying from one of my favorite philosophers,” I said, pausing for emphasis: “Captain Kangaroo.”

The parents in the crowd laughed with me. The high schoolers just stared blankly.

I realized, too late, that they had never heard of Captain Kangaroo and had no idea why it was funny to call him a “philosopher.”

And though I plowed ahead, I’ve figured out since that even the “wisdom” of Captain Kangaroo’s saying has been eroded by time. And bakeries.

“As you go through life, make this your goal. Watch the doughnut, not the hole.”

The captain’s clever way of saying “Look on the bright side” makes perfect sense to me, but probably not to my grandchildren, for whom doughnut holes are a favorite treat.

But, looking at the doughnut - and the list - it’s clear that not everything is changing, willynilly.

Today’s college freshmen have never known a time when the post office wasn’t going broke. Or when the nation approved of the job Congress is doing.

Something tells me, those two items will still be on the list when nobody remembers Justin Bieber and “Twilight” is merely the time shortly before dark.

By then, betcha, those text messages will be considered just too slow.

Andrea Lovejoy is former editor of LaGrange Daily News.