Up the Down Staircase

Author: Bel Kaufman

Age: Adult

Everyone who's ever been a teacher, or been married to a teacher, should read this book. In fact, everyone who's ever had a teacher should read it, too. It's funny, poignant, and a fairly quick read.

The book chronicles Sylvia Barrett's first semester of teaching English at a NYC public high school in the 1960s. Miss Barrett is young, pretty, and, at the beginning of September, enthusiastic. As the semester progresses she deals with dozens of problems and frustrations--some petty, and some much more serious. There are never enough desks, books, or red pencils to go around. The administration is over-bearing and unsympathetic. Other teachers hate the children. And the children have their own problems--unrequited love, abortion, suicide, poverty, homelessness, truancy, delinquency, and no sense of self-worth. Miss Barrett begins to wonder if she's really cut out to be a public school teacher in a big city, or if she would find more happiness and fulfillment as a professor at the small private college that has offered her a position, along with promises of a beautiful campus, enthusiastic students, and the chance to teach an entire course on her beloved Chaucer.

It's written an interesting format, and each chapter is different...dialogue, students' essays, bulletins from the administration, notes passed between harried teachers, excerpts from a student's notebook, student suggestions from Miss Barrett's suggestion box, letters from Miss Barrett to her best friend, and even scraps of paper from the trash can. It's rather interactive, because only the letters from Miss Barrett to her friend provide any clear commentary or narrative from her perspective. The rest of the time, the reader is left to experience the notes, suggestions, and administrative mandates as Miss Barrett would experience them, and draw his or her (when, oh, when will "their" be acceptable as third person sexually-ambiguous singular?) own conclusions.

I know my summary above makes it sound sad, but it's really quite funny through the sadness. It's a book that makes you laugh a lot and think just enough. The most depressing aspect is probably that absolutely nothing about the public school system has changed in the past 50 years. So. Read it. Laugh. Think about education reform. And then spend some time thinking about how grateful you are to your teachers--the ones you had, and the ones who are teaching or will teach your kids. Because it's a hard job.

The best quotes from reviewers:

"A rib tickler and an eye-opener."
"Witty, wise...seldom has a humorous novel been at the same time as important."
"It is the kind of 'funny' that hurts."


Recommended for readers who like: At the moment I'm having a hard time coming up with other books that are quite like it. But there are dozens of movies in this teacher-who-makes-a-difference genre: Mona Lisa Smile, Freedom Writers, Remember the Titans, Stand and Deliver. If you like any of these movies I'm sure you'll like this book. And even if you don't like the movies, well, the book isn't quite like them. It's more humor and less dripping poignancy. And, without giving too much away, it's more about the little ways people can be changed than about big dramatic revolutions. But perhaps the little changes are just as worthwhile, in the end.