Up The Down Staircase - Bel Kaufman

   1965; 370 pages.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Humor; Schools & Teaching; Epistolary Literature.  Laurels : 64 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Today’s the big day!  Sylvia Barrett starts her new job in her new career!

    Okay, so it’s as a substitute teacher at Calvin Coolidge High School, which is not the most prestigious educational institute in town.  That would be Willowdale Academy.  But hey, this is Sylvia’s chance to get her foot in the door, and maybe that will eventually lead to an opportunity to teach at Willowdale.

    It's an exciting moment for Sylvia.  She will be teaching several classes of English and shepherding a homeroom class.  She dearly wants to make an impact on the teenage lives in both of those situations.  She can hardly wait to see their faces light up when they’re introduced to Shakespeare's plays or Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”.

    Best yet, she’ll have the other teachers, the principal, and the school’s entire key support staff to assist her in this new chapter of her life.  It all starts now, the first day of the fall semester.  I wonder what the class’s first words will be?

    “Hi, teach!”

    “Looka her!  She’s a teacher?”

    “Who she?”

What’s To Like...

    Up The Down Staircase came out in 1965, and was a “wildest-dreams-come-true” experience for Bel Kaufman.  She was 50+ years old, this was her debut novel (originally written as a short story), and it became an instant and long-lasting New York Times bestseller.

    The story is written in epistolary format – the text consists of various written communications such as official memos from the school’s administration to teachers, unofficial memos between Sylvia and fellow teachers, student homework essays on English Lit books, notes from students put in the suggestion box Sylvia installs, and snippets of dialogue between her and her students, primarily those in her homeroom class.  I like this format, see here for another book I read in this style.

    The book is based on the author’s personal teaching career experiences, albeit fictionalized to increase the humor value.  The storyline highlights Sylvia’s attempts to connect with her students, most notably Joe Ferone and Eddie Williams, and with mixed results.  There is some mild romantic tension between Sylvia and an attractive-but-dorky fellow English teacher, a mysterious custodian who Sylvia never meets but for whom lots of students request passes to see, and a professional quandary when she contemplates applying for a position at the more upscale Willowdale Academy next semester.

    I liked the character developments of both the students and the adults.  The students include a class comedian (hey, that was me!), an apple-polisher, an overweight girl jealous of Sylvia’s looks, a woman-hater, a girl with a hormonal overdrive, a lone and bitter black student, and a Puerto Rican student searching for his identity.  The school officials include an older, wiser, and trusted confidante, an idealistic but utterly clueless principal, his polar-opposite assistant (aware, but cynical), and a number of fellow teachers, embittered by experiences with “the system”.

    The book brought back memories of high school days.  We too had a mandatory Shakespeare play to read each year, and my teachers presented it with an equal lack of enthusiasm.  Sylvia’s students get assigned 100-word essays, mine were 200-worders, including one memorably called “The Mining Industry in Siberia” that was assigned to me as punishment for some class shenanigan.  OTOH, when Sylvia’s explains the meaning of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” I was thoroughly thrilled; I hated it and had zero comprehension of it when we read it in high school English.

    For me the most entertaining parts were the replies put in Sylvia's suggestion box by the students, often anonymously, and their mini-essays for homework assignments such as “What I Got Out of English Class so far”.  But be forewarned, if you’re a grammar nazi, you’ll grit your teeth at the spelling, syntax, and punctuation errors.  There’s also some more-serious insight into topics such as racial integration and the uneasy trust issues between students and school officials.

    The ending was kind of a “lump-in-the-throat” thing for me.  It’s not particularly surprising, but makes up for that by being heartwarming, which I think is apt for this type of story.  Lots of issues remain unresolved, but that too is okay – major personal and cultural issues are rarely solved in a single semester.  Timewise, the story covers only the fall term, and it screams for a sequel to cover the spring semester, but alas, this is a one-and-done novel.

Excerpts...

    “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket.  You’ll soon learn the language.  “Let it be a challenge to you” means you’re stuck with it; “interpersonal relationships” is a fight between kids; “ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline” means call the cops; “Language Arts Dept.” is the English office; “literature based on child’s reading level and experiential background” means that’s all they’ve got in the Book Room; “non-academic-minded” is a delinquent; and “It has come to my attention” means you’re in trouble.  (loc. 600, and is a decoding of key phrases in "Intraschool Communications" that Sylvia is struggling to comprehend.)

    Correct the following for Fri.

1. Rowing on the lake the moon was romantic.

    Correction – While rowing on the lake the moon was romantic?

    Or – Rowing on the lake, the moon was romantic?

2. Looking out of the window was a tree.

    Correction – Looking out of the window a tree appeared in view.

3. I found a pencil loitering in the hall.

    Correction – A pencil loitering in the hall was found by me.  (loc. 3247; homework notes jotted down by a student)

Kindle Details…

    Up The Down Staircase goes for $5.99 at Amazon.  Bel Kaufman subsequently published three more books: a romance, a collection of her essays, and an anthology of short stories by her.  None of these are presently available at Amazon in e-book format.

What do I do about a kid who calls me “Hi, teach?”  (…)  Why not answer Hi, pupe?  (loc. 592)

    The quibbles are minor.  There’s a bunch of acronyms – SS, PPP, PRC, CC, etc. – repeatedly used in the school memos.  Bel Kaufman tells you what they mean the first time, then expects you (and Sylvia) to remember what they stand for thereafter.  Keep notes.

    Some reviewers were critical of the shallow way the integration issue was handled, but Up The Down Staircase is meant to be a lighthearted tale, and frankly, in my high school in 1964 there was no sense of activism about it.  I’m actually pleasantly surprised Bel Kaufman gave it some ink in the book.  Ditto for the use of the word “Negro”, which is obsolete nowadays, but was politically correct back then.

    There is a smattering of cussing, including the F-word (once spelled correctly, once not), which IMO is realistic for high school student dialogue.  In the book's Foreword, Bel Kaufman discusses the efforts by the publisher to get her to "soften" the words used in these instances, which ones she acquiesced to, and which ones she didn't.  That section is somewhat lengthy, but gives some keen insight into pressures that publishing houses can put on fledgling authors.

    8 Stars.  Up The Down Staircase is a fast, easy read; ideal if you have a book review due tomorrow and you haven’t even started reading anything.  It took the reading world by storm in 1965, and was made into a hit movie a couple years later.  Bel Kaufman lived to the ripe old age of 103, born in 1911, died in 2014.  Amazingly, her (second) husband, five years her junior, was still alive when she passed away.  It would be great to have their combined longevity genes.