High School Classic

"This book has done more for education and understanding of teachers than any other book," exclaims Jean Thomas, curriculum supervisor in the San Francisco public schools. "As a portrait of teen-age society, it is a classic on the order of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye," says Los Angeles Teacher Olga Richards. "I'm not familiar with the book," huffs H. M. Landrum, superintendent of Houston's Spring Branch School District.

Lavish praise from teachers and considerable coolness among administrators is the fate of New York Teacher Bel Kaufman's amusing, poignant and pointed first novel, Up the Down Staircase, which dramatizes the first-year frustrations of a metropolitan high school teacher. Easily the most popular novel about U.S. public schools in history, the book has just passed a full year on the bestseller lists, sold 350,000 copies in hard cover and 1,500,000 in its first month in paperback. Warner Bros, has paid $400,000 for film rights and is now trying to pick an actress for the lead role of Teacher Sylvia Barrett--young, bright, compassionate and sexy.

Identification Value. Staircase's success is a sweet surprise to Miss Kaufman, a vivacious divorcee and mother of two (her son is a Berkeley graduate student, her daughter a University of Wisconsin senior), who quit the New York City school system after 17 intermittent years as a high school English teacher to write her book. "I thought teachers would find it to be true," she says. "But I had no idea it would sweep the country." Now much in demand as a lecturer at teachers' conventions, Miss Kaufman lives in a Park Avenue apartment, likes the shift from classroom to celebrity, finds it difficult to get back to her new duties as an assistant English professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She also enjoys the money--at least $500,000 so far.

Her story is told as a grab bag of gleanings from Teacher Barrett's mailbox, blackboard, wastebasket and students' schoolwork. Teachers chuckle in recognition at the memos Miss Barrett receives, such as one beginning: "Please disregard the following," and at the kids' comments, such as a boy's note explaining his failure to turn in homework: "My dog pead on it." Teachers everywhere seem to have kids as sniggery as those of Miss Barrett's, who is advised by a veteran teacher: "Never give a lesson on lie and lay" and never say "the word frigate," as in Emily Dickinson's "There is no frigate like a book."

To Make a Difference. Bel Kaufman knows firsthand how a kid can get lost in a classroom. A granddaughter of Humorist Sholom Aleichem ("the Yiddish Mark Twain"), she was born in Berlin, lived until twelve in Russia, where her father practiced medicine and her mother wrote short stories. Her family then moved to The Bronx, where she was thrown into first grade with six-year-olds and learned English "by osmosis." She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College, earned an M.A. in 18th century literature from Columbia, taught in every type of New York City high school, from those in slum areas to Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts.

Many teachers across the U.S. feel that Up the Down Staircase effectively reinforces their own desire to reach lost children. They are moved by the boy who explains in a note to Miss Barrett, signed only "Me," why he may drop out of school: "I'm nobody especial so nobody knows me, maybe I'll be somebody with a job." Miss Kaufman contends in the book that there is only one consolation for a teacher's many agonies: "To make a permanent difference to at least one child." Her teacher-readers respond with a heartfelt amen.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.