The Graves of Academe

The Graves of Academe
Richard Mitchell
ISBN 0-671-63937-4
Simon and Schuster, Inc./Fireside Books
1981

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of
intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.
--Edmund Burke
Praised by critics across the nation, The Graves of Academe is Richard
Mitchell's angry and brilliant tour through America's bloated public
school system -- whose mangled, self-serving language and policies
would make Orwell wince. Stamped with vintage Mitchell wit and
laced with stinging examples from The Underground Grammarian, The
Graves of Academe pinpoints the historic sources of the mind-boggling
"educationist" bureaucracy and reveals why today's schools are riddled
not only with illiterate students but with illiterate teachers and
administrators as well.
The Graves of Academe is a book of the highest importance...its
slashing and irrefutable attack, not on teachers, but on the educational
establishment that trains them -- and which his trained us...Mr. Mitchell
is invaluable. Also -- he's enormously entertaining: -- Clifton Fadiman
"This is one of those books that seem to make such eminent common
sense that you feel compelled to read aloud selected passages to those

within hearing -- regardless of whether they want to listen." Dallas
Times Herald "...makes H.L. Mencken sound like a waffler." Time
"Mitchell is a brilliant stylist, a shrewd observer and a genuine wit."
National Review "...a delightfully satirical book on the malaise of the
American educational system, `the professional educator,' the people
who, in the eyes of the authors Richard Mitchell, are responsible for the
deplorable state of American English...Amen and hallelujah, this is fine
reading." Charleston Evening Post
"...this angry, witty, and very accurate assessment of the current
educational scene should be required reading for every parent who has
or will have children in what Mitchell calls `The Great Dismal Swamp'
of public education." Fresno Bee "Witty, literate, thoughtful and
provocative..." Atlantic City Sunday Press

Foreword
This book started out to be a large collection of pieces from The
Underground Grammarian, a dissident if tiny journal that has achieved
notoriety if not fame, and to which I am a party. Such a collection was
proposed by a publisher (not, I am happy to say, my publisher) and
recommended as a not-too-difficult task. My own publisher, Little,
Brown, although wise enough not to suggest such a venture, was
nevertheless not as prudent when it came to signing a contract.
I spent several months choosing, ordering, and contemplating
selections from The Underground Grammarian, intending to sort them
by themes and stitch them together with running commentaries,
elaborations, and second thoughts. Even third thoughts. It turned out a
stupid and pointless exercise. If there is anyone who thinks that the
world needs such a collection, let him make it.
What stopped me was this: As I went through scores of essays on the
relation of language to the work of the mind and critical commentaries
on displays of ignorance and stupidity in the written work of

academicians, I could see that some were more important than others.
They suggested a single theme. They were all more or less about the
same thing, that special and unmistakable kind of mendacious babble
that characterizes not politicians or businessmen, not Pentagon
spokesmen or commercial hucksters, but, always and only, those
members of the academic community who are pleased to call
themselves the "professionals" of education. Those pieces, taken
together, seemed to me at least a skimpy outline, or, better, scattered
reference points suggesting something much larger and more
momentous than a mere collection of ponderous inanities. It seemed to
me that I could, from certain of those small articles, make out the
murky form of the hidden monster whose mere projections they were,
breaking here and there the oily surface of some dark pool.
As a result, I abandoned the collection and undertook the task of
describing, by extrapolation from one visible protuberance to another,
and with a little probing, the great invisible hulk of the beast, the
brooding monstrosity of American educationism, the immense,
mindless brute that by now troubles the waters of all, all that is done in
our land in the supposed cause of "education," since when, as you see, I
can rarely bring myself to write that word without quotation marks, or
even fashion a sentence less than nine or ten lines long, lest I
inadvertently fail to suggest the creature's awesome dimensions and
seemingly endless tentacular complexities. I will try to do better. The
somber subject requires clarity.
Thou canst not, however, draw out this Leviathan with an hook either.
A complete, thoughtful history and analysis of American educationism
would require several fat volumes, and even the author's best friends
would not read it. It is, after all, a boring subject. I have done my best
to make it interesting by dwelling on