The Graves of Academe | Page 6

however, they will also be correct, and, if
taken all together, will indeed tell us much about our present troubles.
The academic world is like any other group of related enterprises in
which everybody can provide something but nobody can provide
everything. For the building of houses, for instance, we need many
different things, and they are not easily interchangeable. When we need
copper tubing, we need copper tubing, and we can't make do with
wallboard instead. If houses are built, therefore, many people making
many different things will be able to produce what is both useful and
profitable. And, while the makers of copper tubing won't have to worry
about competition from the makers of wallboard, they will have to be
mindful of other makers of copper tubing and also of the makers of
plastic tubing. That will be good for the whole enterprise.
Suppose, though, that the copper-tubing people should, through quirk
or cunning, secure for themselves some special legal privilege. First
they persuade the state, which already has the power to license the
building of houses, to prohibit the use of plastic tubing. That's good,
but so long as the state is willing to go that far, the copper-tubing
makers seek and achieve a regulation requiring some absolute
minimum quantity of copper tubing in every new house. Now you must
suppose that the copper-tubing lobby has grown so rich and powerful
that the law now requires that fifty percent of the mass of every new
house must be made up of copper tubing.

Houses could still be built. Walls, floors, and ceilings could be made of
coils and bundles of copper tubing smeared over with plaster or stucco.
Copper tubing could be cleverly welded and twisted into everything
from doorknobs to windowsills and produced in large sizes for heating
ducts and chimneys. The houses would be dreadful, of course, and,
should you ask why, you will discover that craftsmen in the building
trades are more direct and outspoken than college professors. They'll
just tell you straight out that these are lousy houses because of all that
damn copper tubing. If the professor of mathematics were equally frank,
he'd tell you that our schools are full of supposed teachers of
mathematics who have studied "education" when they should have
studied mathematics.
This is, I admit, not an exact analogy. The manufacture of copper
tubing actually does have some relationship to the building of houses,
while the study of "education" has no relationship at all to the making
of educated people. The analogy would perhaps have been better had I
chosen, instead of the manufacturers of copper tubing, the
manufacturers of gelatin desserts. To grasp the true nature of the place
of educationism in the academic world, you have to imagine that
houses are to be made mostly of Jell-O - each flavor equally
represented - and that the builders must eat a bowl an hour.
(Well, that analogy fails, too. Jell-O is at least a colorful and
entertaining treat with no known harmful side effects. The same cannot
be said of the study of "education.")
Our public system of education, from Head Start to the graduate
schools of the state universities, might also be called a government
system. Those who teach in its primary and secondary schools are
required by law to serve time, often as much as one half of their
undergraduate program, in the classes of the teacher-trainers. Should
they seek graduate degrees, which will bring them automatic raises,
they will still have to spend about one half their time taking yet again
courses devoted to things like interpersonal relations and the
appreciation of alternative remediation enhancements. The
educationistic monopoly is strong enough that in at least one state

(there are probably others, but I'm afraid to find out), a high school
mathematics teacher who is arrogant enough to take a master's degree
in mathematics will discover that he is no longer certified to teach that
subject. If he wants to keep his job, he must take a degree in
"mathematics education," which will, of course, permit him to spend
some of his time studying his subject. Even where there is no such
visibly monopolistic requirement, the laws and regulations of the public
schools, which have been devised by educationists in the teachers'
colleges, provide an effective equivalent.
The intellectual climate of the public schools, which must inevitably
become the intellectual climate of the nation, does not seem to be
conducive to the spread of what Jefferson called informed discretion.
The intellectual climate of the nation today came from the public
schools, where almost every one of us was schooled in the work of the
mind. We are a people who imagine that we are weighing important
issues when we exchange generalizations and well-known opinions.
We decide how