The novel has a fairly unusual structure, presented as a series of memos, notes, letters, suggestion box cards and notebook pages, following the first semester in the life of Sylvia Barrett, a rookie teacher who has been hired by the (fictional) Calvin Coolidge high school. This introductory passage is fascinating (and she gets to indulge in some well-earned bragging about the universality of the story and massive success in translation), it’s interesting that she seems to think that the state of public education is much changed for the worse, focusing on the police presence, metal detectors in the halls and the chancellor’s visit to investigate a case of a “child molester”.īut the big stuff packs a gut-punch of recognition: the petty administrators who bully teachers because they can, the memos (now disseminated via e-mail) that may begin “please disregard the following…” the success and failures, and of course, the students who remain pretty much “alright”. In Kaufman’s introduction to 1991 edition she outlines the origins of the book and her own career as a high school English teacher, first in the gray area of a “Per Diem sub” when the Board of Education repeatedly flunks her on the oral portion of the licensing exam because, as the child of Russian immigrants, she had practiced too well- apparently they feared she would make her students’ pronunciation too affected. In 2017, there may also be fewer H-Bomb drills than in 1964.

Right down to the draconian dictates on the raising and lowering of classroom shades.

It’s only fair to state at the outset that I come to Up The Down Staircase with a bias- like Bel Kaufman, I am a Hunter College alumnae who teaches in the New York City school system, so I feel I can answer with authority the question of the hour: how much, exactly, have things changed in the last 50 years? This month, the June selection, Bel Kaufman’s Up The Down Staircase. As all of the four selected titles have filmed adaptations, we will be looking at the movie versions as we go along. ( Click here for information on the 2017 edition of Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature.

Up the down staircase novel