> No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.

This is a widespread sentiment. This is even a chic sentiment. This is maybe even a sentiment I once sympathized with. It is also the kind of romantic bullshit that hurts people.

It doesn't really matter if Johnny Middle Class believes it, his parents can probably help him muddle along somehow. Jorge, though, first in his family to get to college, might just take it seriously, and wind up somewhere ugly with too much debt, four years gone, and a piece of paper that nobody wants.

I personally know at least a dozen people like that. I didn't make that mistake- but it was more by whim than anything else.

The worst, saddest part of all of this, is how trope heavy and unoriginal it is. This is the world's second oldest complaint, right after "the youth are lazy and disrespectful."