Up the Down Staircase

For the film based on this novel, see Up the Down Staircase (film). For the South Park episode, see Up the Down Steroid.

Up the Down Staircase

First edition
Author	Bel Kaufman
Language	English
Publisher	Prentice-Hall
Publication date	1964
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	340 p. (hardback edition) & 368 p. (paperback edition)
ISBN	0-06-097361-7 (paperback edition)
OCLC	23255071
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PS3561.A83 U6 1991

Up the Down Staircase is a novel written by Bel Kaufman, published in 1964, which spent 64 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. In 1967 it was released as a film starring Sandy Dennis, Patrick Bedford, and Eileen Heckart.

Plot

The plot revolves around Sylvia Barrett, an idealistic English language teacher at an inner-city high school who hopes to nurture her students' interest in classic literature (especially Chaucer and writing). She quickly becomes discouraged during her first year of teaching, frustrated by bureaucracy, the indifference of her students, and the incompetence of many of her colleagues. The title of the book is taken from a memo telling her why a student was being punished: he had gone "up the down staircase". She decides to leave the public school (government funded) system to work in a smaller private setting. She changes her mind, though, when she realizes that she has, indeed, touched the lives of her students.

The novel is epistolary; aside from opening and closing chapters consisting entirely of dialogue the story is told through memos from the office, fragments of notes dropped in the trash can, essays handed in to be graded, lesson plans, suggestions dropped in the class suggestion box, and most often by inter-classroom notes that are a dialogue between Sylvia and an older teacher. Sylvia also writes letters to a friend from college who chose to get married and start a family rather than pursuing a career. The letters serve as a recap and summary of key events in the book, and offer a portrait of women's roles and responsibilities in American society in the mid-1960s.

An inter-classroom note in which the older teacher is translating the jargon of the memos from the office includes the memorable epigram "'Let it be a challenge to you' means you're stuck with it." Calling a trash can a circular file comes from the same memo: "'Keep on file in numerical order' means throw in waste-basket."

Adaptations

The novel has been adapted to film and the stage. Tad Mosel wrote the screenplay for the 1967 film version starring Sandy Dennis as the teacher. The play is frequently performed in high school drama classes. The film version was parodied in Mad magazine as "In the Out Exit" in regular issue #118, April 1968. Notable productions include: Quince Orchard High School (Gaithersburg, Maryland) in November 2007 for their critically acclaimed performance by the National Theatre Critics Association and Omaha State University's 2005 production featuring Bernard Olesemio as Jose Martinez.