The Graves of Academe | Page 5

finds that it is habitually expressed in tangled, ungrammatical
jargon, penetrable, when it is at all, only to one who has nothing better
to do. I hope, little by little, to dissect and elucidate that theory, for it is
in fact even more frightening than it is dismal. For now, I can take only
a first but essential step and urge you to consider this principle: The
clouded language of educational theory is an evolved, protective
adaptation that hinders thought and understanding. As such, it is no
more the result of conscious intention than the markings of a moth. But
it works. Thus, those who give themselves to the presumed study and
the presumptuous promulgation of educational theory are usually both
deceivers and deceived. The murky language where their minds
habitually dwell at once unminds them and gives them the power to
unmind others.
We will, with appropriate examples, explore the evolution of that
strange trait, especially in that portion of the educational establishment
where it is most evident: that is, among the people to whom we have
given the training of teachers and the formulation of educational theory.
In the cumbersome and complicated contraption we call "public
education," the trainers of teachers have special powers and privileges.
Although in law they are governed by civilian boards and legislatures,
they are in fact but little governed, for they have convinced the boards
and legislatures that only teacher-trainers can judge the work of
teacher-trainers. That wasn't hard to do, for boards and legislatures are
made up largely of people who have, in their time, already been blinded
by the one-eyed man, having been given, as helpless children, what we
call "education" rather than practice in informed discretion. The very
language in which the teacher-trainers explain their labors will quickly
discourage close scrutiny in even a thoughtful board member, perhaps

especially in a thoughtful board member, who has after all, other and
more important (he thinks) things to do.
It is not strictly true that the public schools are a state-supported
monopoly. There are other schools. But the teacher-trainers are
certainly a state-supported monopoly. There are no other
teacher-trainers than the ones we have, and they are all in the business
of teaching something they call "education." No one knows exactly
what that is, and even among educationists there is some mild
contention as to whether there actually exists some body of knowledge
that can be called "education" as separate from other knowable subjects.
You may want to make up your own mind as to that, for in later
chapters you will see examples of what is actually done by those who
teach "education." But for now we must consider the usually unnoticed
effects of the monopoly they enjoy.
The laws of supply and demand work in the academic world just as
they do in the marketplace, which is to say, of course, that what is
natural and reasonable will not happen where government intervenes.
Our schools can be usefully likened to a nationalized industrial system
in which the production of goods is directed not by entrepreneurs
looking to profit but by social planners intending to change the world.
Thus it is the business of the schools, and the special task of the
educationists who produce teachers, to generate both supply and
demand, so that the nation will want exactly what it is they intend to
provide.
Within the academic marketplace, there are many enterprises other than
educationism, however. Historically, they have not seen themselves in
competition with one another, although I'm sure that the faculties of the
medieval universities were not reluctant to claim that their disciplines
were more noble than the others. Individual professors, of course, must
indeed have competed for students, by whom they were paid, but the
students, many of whom were to become professors themselves, were
free to devote themselves to whatever discipline seemed good. But
between one discipline and another there seems to have been, rather
than competition, sectarianism.

A similar sectarianism has been revivified by our current educational
disorders. If you ask a professor of geography why we seem to be
turning into a nation of ignorant rabble, he will not be able to refrain
from pointing out that we don't teach geography anymore and that high
school graduates aren't even sure of the name of the next state, never
mind the climatic characteristics of the Great Plains or the rivers that
drain the Ohio Valley. Professors of physics will allude to the
all-too-inevitable consequences of ignorance of the laws of motion and
thermodynamics. You can easily devise for yourself the comments of
professors of mathematics, languages, history, literature, and indeed of
any who teach those things we think of as traditional academic
disciplines. Their views will be, of course, at least partly predictable
expressions of self-interest;