Up the Down Staircase stands as the seminal novel of a beleaguered public school system that is redeemed by teachers who love to teach and students who long to be recognised. Her bumpy yet ultimately rewarding journey is depicted through an extraordinary collection of correspondence: sternly worded yet nonsensical administrative memos, furtive notes of wisdom from teacher to teacher, ‘polio consent slips’, and student homework assignments that unwittingly speak from the heart. Instead she encounters broken windows, a lack of supplies, a stifling bureaucracy, and students with no interest in Chaucer. Sylvia Barrett arrives at New York City’s Calvin Coolidge High fresh from earning literature degrees at Hunter College and eager to shape young minds. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Our reissue of Bel Kaufman’s bestselling 1964 novel timelessly depicts the shambolic joys and myriad frustrations of a young teacher. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. That's how I managed to stand up.Ĭopyright © 2014 NPR. Whatever the ways stupidity, ineptitude, whatever the problems and frustrations of teachers and pupils, something very exciting is going on in each of the classrooms on each of the floors all at the same time - education is going on. In another - committee reports on slum clearance. In another - a hum of voices and toned French conjugations. In one - a lesson on the nature of Greek tragedy. An older colleague tells her, walk through the halls, listen at the classroom doors. There's a section towards the close of the book when the young teacher despairs she hasn't been able to make a difference in her students' lives. The very title has become a metaphor for bureaucratic nonsense. "Up The Down Staircase" sold more than 6 million copies - was made into a popular film. It was both an alarm bell and a love letter told in a series of notes and memos that range between the ridiculous and the stirring. Her 1965 bestseller "Up The Down Staircase" told of a new teacher's first year in a public high school that was tough, gritty and chaotic before school bureaucrats began to say diverse. She died yesterday in Manhattan at the age of 103. So Bel Kauffman wrote a book that taught the world. What happened - did you rob a bank? No, he said, a grocery store. She liked to tell a story about a student who came in late. Bel Kaufman was a substitute teacher who bounced between public high schools in New York because her Ukrainian accent was considered a little thick.
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