Except that there are some things money can't buy. We know that, too, but seldom say it as plainly and as sensibly as Richard Rothstein managed in a New York Times column the other day. Consider how typical middle-class families raise children. Infants' first toys are 'touch and feel' books. Toddlers soon 'read' stories from memory.
Magnetic letters decorate refrigerator doors.
Sitting on parents' laps, children 'help' compose on computers before they can talk. These children attend preschool with equally verbal toddlers. They adopt family assumptions that someday they too will become professionals. . . . But other children's homes are without books, magnetic letters or computers. These children have day care, not preschool.