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SHARETEXT™
The Graves of Academe 
Page 1
Why can’t our nation read, write,cipher or THINK? The Underground Grammarian takes on the American Educational Establishment.
___________Praised by critics across the nation,
The Graves of  Academe
is Richard Mitchell’s angry and brillianttour through America’s bloated public schoolsystem—whose mangled, self-serving languageand policies would make Orwell wince. Stampedwith vintage Mitchell wit and laced with stingingexamples from
The Underground Grammarian,The Graves of Academe
pinpoints the historicsources of the mind-boggling “educationist”bureaucracy and reveals why today’s schools areriddled not only with illiterate students but withilliterate teachers and administrators as well.“Richard Mitchell has done it again. He hasloosed his noble lance of hate, fury and witagainst the malignant stupidities that infest theworld of education. . . . His book should be readby everyone who detests stupidity and whoadmires that rare virtue called common sense.”—Howard Fast“Richard Mitchell is still angrily hunting down the‘education professionals’ . . . I think he’s gainingon them.” —Edwin Newman“
The Grave of Academe
is a book of the highestimportance. . . a slashing and irrefutable attack,not on teachers, but on the educationalestablishment that trains them—and which hastrained us. . . . Mr. Mitchell is invaluable. Also—he’s enormously entertaining.” —Clifton Fadiman“This is one of those books that seem to makesuch eminent common sense that you feelcompelled to read aloud selected passages to thosewithin hearing—regardless of whether they wantto listen.” —
 Dallas Times Herald 
“
…
makes H. L. Mencken sound like a waffler.”—
Time
“Mitchell is a brilliant stylist, a shrewd observerand a genuine wit.” —
 National Review
“…a delightful satirical book on that malaise of the American educational system, ‘theprofessional educator,’ the people who, in theeyes of the author, Richard Mitchell, areresponsible for the deplorable state of AmericanEnglish. . . . Amen and hallelujah, this is finereading.” —
Charleston Evening Post 
“This angry, witty, and very accurate assessmentof the current educational scene should berequired reading for every parent who has or willhave children in what Mitchell calls ‘The GreatDismal Swamp’ of public education.” —
Fresno Bee
“Witty, literate, thoughtful and provocative. . . .”—
 Atlantic City Sunday Press
 
SHARETEXT™
The Graves of Academe 
Page 2
 It is ordained in the eternal constitution of thingsthat men of intemperate minds cannot be free;their passions forge their fetters.
Edmund Burke
Foreword
____________________________________________
T
HIS book started out to be a large collection of pieces from
The Underground Grammarian
, adissident if tiny journal that has achievednotoriety 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) andrecommended as a not-too-difficult task. My ownpublisher, Little, Brown, although wise enoughnot to suggest such a venture, was neverthelessnot as prudent when it came to signing a contract.I spent several months choosing, ordering, andcontemplating selections from
The Underground Grammarian
, intending to sort them by themesand stitch them together with runningcommentaries, elaborations, and second thoughts.Even third thoughts. It turned out a stupid andpointless exercise. If there is anyone who thinksthat the world needs such a collection, let himmake it.What stopped me was this: As I went throughscores of essays on the relation of language to thework of the mind and critical commentaries ondisplays of ignorance and stupidity in the writtenwork of academicians, I could see that some weremore important than others. They suggested asingle theme. They were all more or less about thesame thing, that special and unmistakable kind of mendacious babble that characterizes
not 
politicians or businessmen, not Pentagonspokesmen or commercial hucksters, but, alwaysand only, those members of the academiccommunity who are pleased to call themselves the“professionals” of education. Those pieces, takentogether, seemed to me at least a skimpy outline,or, better, scattered reference points suggestingsomething much larger and more momentous thana mere collection of ponderous inanities. Itseemed to me that I could, from certain of thosesmall articles, make out the murky form of thehidden monster whose mere projections theywere, breaking here and there the oily surface of some dark pool.As a result, I abandoned the collection andundertook the task of describing, by extrapolationfrom one visible protuberance to another, and witha little probing, the great invisible hulk of thebeast, the brooding monstrosity of Americaneducationism, the immense, mindless brute that bynow troubles the waters of all,
all
that is done inour land in the supposed cause of “education,”since when, as you see, I can rarely bring myself to write that word without quotation marks, oreven fashion a sentence less than nine or ten lineslong, lest I inadvertently fail to suggest thecreature’s awesome dimensions and seeminglyendless tentacular complexities. I will try to dobetter. The somber subject requires clarity.Thou canst not, however, draw out thisLeviathan with an hook either. A complete,thoughtful history and analysis of Americaneducationism would require several fat volumes,and even the author’s best friends would not readit. It is, after all, a boring subject. I have done mybest to make it interesting by dwelling on itsstartling and horrifying attributes, which are, inany case, the most important indicators of itsharmful powers. It’s not a pretty sight. I havebeen, too, as brief as possible. In consequence,there is probably no understanding in this book of which it is not possible to say: “Well, true, butthere’s more to it than that.” Quite so. I hope thatmany will someday look for the “more,” but I willbe content, for now, with the “true.” I haveeverywhere provided as true an understanding as Ican discover, and I am persuaded that acomprehensive and detailed historical analysiswill, if it ever appears, show that my assessmentof American educationism is encyclopaedicallyincomplete but right anyway. The prodigiousmonster is down there, I know, and even if itstentacles and appendages, its gross organs andprotrusions, its subtle convolutions and recesses,are invisible, I have still seen enough to know thenature of the beast.
 
SHARETEXT™
The Graves of Academe 
Page 3
PropositionsThree and Seven
____________________________________________
I
N THE COUNTRY of the blind, the one-eyedman is, as we all know, king. And across the way,in the country of the witless, the half-wit is king.And why not? It’s only natural, and consideringthe circumstances, not really a bad system. We dothe best we can.But it is a system with some unhappyconsequences. The one-eyed man knows that hecould never be king in the land of the two-eyed,and the half-wit knows that he would be smallpotatoes indeed in a land where most people hadall or most of their wits about them. These rulers,therefore, will be inordinately selective about theirsocial programs, which will be designed not onlyto protect against the rise of the witful and thesighted, but, just as important, to ensure a never-failing supply of the witless and utterly blind.Even to the half-wit and the one-eyed man, it isclear that other half-wits and one-eyed men arepotential competitors and supplanters, and theyinvert the ancient tale in which an anxious tyrantkept watch against a one-sandaled stranger bykeeping watch against wanderers with both eyesand operating minds. Uneasy lies the head.Unfortunately, most people are born with twoeyes and even the propensity to think. If nothing isdone about this, chaos, obviously, threatens theland. Even worse, unemployment threatens theone-eyed man and the half-wit. However, sincethey do in fact rule, those potentates have notmuch to fear, for they can command theconstruction and perpetuation of a state-supportedand legally enforced system for the early detectionand obliteration of antisocial traits, and thusarrange that witfulness and 20-20 vision willtrouble the land as little as possible. The system iscalled “education.”Such is our case. Nor should that surpriseanyone. Like living creatures, institutions intendprimarily to live and do whatever else they doonly to that end. Unlike some living creatures,however, who do in fact occasionally decide thatthere is something even more to be prized thantheir own survival, institutions are never capableof altruism, heroism, or even self-denial. If youimagine that they are, if, for instance, you fancythat the welfare system or the Federal Reserveexists and labors for “the good of the people,”then you can be sure that the minions of the one-eyed man and the half-wit are pleased with you.Furthermore, any institution that still standsmust, by that very fact, be successful. When wesay, as we seem to more and more these days, thateducation in America is “failing,” it is because wedon’t understand the institution. It is, in fact,succeeding enormously. It grows daily, hourly, inpower and wealth, and that precisely
because
of our accusations of failure. The more we complainagainst it, the more it can lay claim to
our 
powerand wealth, in the name of curing those ills of which we complain. And, in our special case, in aland ostensibly committed to individual freedomand rights, it can and does make the ultimateclaim—to be, that is, the free, universal system of public education that alone can raise up to a freeland citizens who will understand and love anddefend individual freedom and rights. Like anypolitician, the institution of education claimsdirect descent in apostolic succession from theFounding Fathers.Jefferson was in favor of education, indubitably,but he meant the condition, not the word. He heldthat there was no expectation, “in a state of civilization,” that we could be both free andignorant. The modifier is important; it is tosuggest that we might indeed be “free” andignorant in savagery. Free at least from theconventional and mutually admitted restraints towhich civilized people bind themselves.Using Jefferson’s terms, we can derive exactlyeight propositions to think about:1. We can be ignorant and free in savagery.2. We can be ignorant and free in civilization.3. We can be ignorant and unfree in civilization.4. We can be ignorant and unfree in savagery.5. We can be educated and free in savagery.6. We can be educated and free in civilization.7. We can be educated and unfree in civilization.8. We can be educated and unfree in savagery.Jefferson asserts that the second is impossible,thereby implying the possibility of the first andthe sixth. The fifth and the eighth seem unlikely,
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