Up the Down Staircase
Bel Kaufman, 1964
★ 3.96 from 10.7k ratings on Goodreads
Graphic novels & humour Literary fiction
A first-year teacher's dispatches from a New York City high school, assembled from memos, notes and student voices — funny, furious and still familiar. A collage of memos, notes, and student voices moves fast and funny, with a weary, wired teacher's voice holding it together.
Feels like wonder, grief and humor. About memory, time and war.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy school stories told through documents and overheard voices, especially when the humor has a sharp bureaucratic edge. Some readers do find the dated slang and the uneven joke-to-grievance ratio hard going.
Why read it
It gives you a quick, funny, and humane view of a school system's absurd machinery and the people caught inside it.
A page from the book
The private language of institutions, translated by someone who has learned to hate it.
The clerical work is par for the course. “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. What readers say
Readers found the book funny and moving, often nostalgic about school days and inspired by teachers who care. Many were frustrated by bureaucratic absurdity and student hardship; some found it dated, unfunny, or unconvincing.
Bel Kaufman.Bel Kaufman was the granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem and drew on her own years teaching English in New York City public schools.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Up the Down Staircase for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy school stories told through documents and overheard voices, especially when the humor has a sharp bureaucratic edge. Some readers do find the dated slang and the uneven joke-to-grievance ratio hard going.
- What is Up the Down Staircase like?
- A collage of memos, notes, and student voices moves fast and funny, with a weary, wired teacher's voice holding it together. Feels like wonder, grief and humor. About memory, time and war.
- What should I read after Up the Down Staircase?
- If you liked Up the Down Staircase, try Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut), Hearts in Atlantis (Stephen King) and The House on Hope Street (Danielle Steel).
A taste of the feed
What if war is a glacier, and no book has ever moved one?
“You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?” “No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?” “I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’” What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.
Slaughterhouse-Five · Kurt Vonnegut
The question underneath every loss: not why we hurt, but who we were.
I cried, all right. I sat there at my desk and I cried for her, for me, for both of us, for all of us. I can’t remember hurting any more in my life than I did then. Hearts are tough, she said, most times hearts don’t break, and I’m sure that’s right ... but what about then? What about who we were then? What about hearts in Atlantis?
Hearts in Atlantis · Stephen King
The number you must not look at while your air runs out.
I switched to long, even hops. It felt like slow motion, but it was the best way to move with all that weight. My helmet’s heads-up display said the airlock was fifty-two meters away. I glanced at my arm readouts. My oxygen reserve plummeted while I watched. So I stopped watching.
Artemis · Andy Weir
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