Where the pygmies rule, everybody else has to crouch.

I believe Richard Mitchell's writings are out of print. They are worthy reads. Check the link for internet copies. Below is a short excerpt from one of my favorite sections. Though the metaphor is not original ("Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies." Honore de Balzac), Mitchell's use of it to describe our schools is dead on.

Where the pygmies rule, everybody else has to crouch.

"For years, I have been looking around for the key, the master metaphor, the one striking analogy that would clarify and dramatize the nature of our schools. They are . . . like some island nation in which the traditional, mild, but inefficient governance once exercised by a genteel but effete and distracted aristocracy has been taken over, without any bloodshed at all, by bands of persistent pygmies from the unexplored interior. The less than worldly aristocrats, far more interested in watching for comets and collecting Lepidoptera than in zoning rules and customs control, were not displeased to accede when the pygmies drifted in and offered to do all the hard work. It seemed such a good idea at the time, but by now the pygmies are in charge of everything, and the bemused aristocrats, whose ancestral estates have been converted to miniature golf courses, find that they are sipping their soup out of very small spoons."

Mitchell, Richard. The Graves of Academe. Accessed 25 December 2004.