"I reflected in my Mind on the extream Folly of those Parents, who, blind to their Childrens Dulness, and insensible of the Solidity of their Skulls, because they think their Purses can afford it, will needs send them to the Temple of Learning*, where, for want of a suitable Genius, they learn little more than how to carry themselves handsomely, and enter a Room genteely, (which might as well be acquir’d at a Dancing-School,) and from whence they return, after Abundance of Trouble and Charge, as great Blockheads as ever, only more proud and self-conceited.”
Benjamin Franklin, at age 16 in 1722, writing as Silence Dogood, widowed matron with a college-aged son
* He specifically refers to Harvard College at the end of the essay
"Aunt Becky and a Desperate Housewife” serve to identify the two actresses who were indicted for the recent college entrance corruption case.