Young people and trendy Postmodernism

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With my young cousin attending Brown University, I've personally noticed that many teenagers around his age seeming to have adopted post-modern lingo and belief systems.  The esoteric vocabulary and equally focused morality that is used is likely to be only superficially understood.  It takes a lot of time and special interest for someone to be interested and understand ..Foucault.   However, I am beginning to suspect that they are being taught such things through their grade schools.  These people are not hipsters, but very much normal kids.

 

So this is a new development.  If one go farther back in history, these hobbies and mindsets were largely fringe.

 

In my experience, these beliefs and vocabulary were generally retained by the rare philosophy enthusiast, politically inclined or graduates of liberal arts colleges.   They were thus, subject to such influence.  You can often see indirect evidence of trendy literary, sociological and philosophical training in the writings of journalists and other social commentators.   On the other hand, I was never formally taught this mindset and did not even know what the term 'postmodern' meant until I found out myself.  

 

Has anybody else observed this?  Is this a very recent public schooling fad (for people born post 1990)?  What I have seen may be just a few isolated observations, then.