Kaufman wrote, because “my dog pead on it.” An English teacher advises another, “Never give a lesson on lie and lay,” and never, under any circumstances, utter the word “frigate” in class. One student in the book couldn’t turn in his homework, Ms. The student archetypes in “Staircase” are familiar to anyone who has taught, or attended, school: tough-talking rebels, smarmy teacher’s pet and talented students falling behind because of hard times or indifferent parents. “This author has a refreshing way of stating the facts, of breaking down statistics into recognizable teenagers, of making you smile, be contrite and infuriated all at once,” writer and teacher Beverly Grunwald wrote in the New York Times in 1965. A typically laughable memo begins: “Please disregard the following.”īeyond the laughter, though, “Up the Down Staircase” touched on a variety of social issues that were beginning to affect schools and, in some cases, remain problematic today: poverty, racial strife, drug addiction, crime, teen pregnancy and even the sexual tension between students and teachers. The book’s title came from a note given to a student by a vice princpal: “Please admit bearer to class - Detained by me for going up the Down staircase and subsequent insolence.”Īdministrative ineptitude is a recurring theme, as paperwork, pointless meetings and foolish rules keep interfering with actual learning. The book’s title character, Sylvia Barrett, faces one frustration after another.
Instead, she composed it as a series of letters, memorandums, vignettes, classroom papers and lesson plans to create a portrait of the fictional Calvin Coolidge High School in New York. Kaufman, who was the granddaughter of the celebrated Yiddish-language writer Sholom Aleichem, did not follow standard narrative form in her book. When the paperback edition was issued in 1966, more than 1.5 million copies were sold in the first month.
“Staircase,” which was published in 1965, stayed on bestseller lists for 15 months, including five months at No. With pitch-perfect tone, “Up the Down Staircase” captured the humor, pathos and administrative nonsense of the urban high schools in which Ms.
Her daughter, Thea Goldstine, confirmed the death to news outlets. Bel Kaufman, who turned her experiences teaching in the New York City public schools into the comic novel “Up the Down Staircase,” one of the best-selling books of the 1960s, which was later made into a film, died July 25 at her home in Manhattan.
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