Quotes from book
Up the Down Staircase

Bel Kaufmanová

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, Ruth White, Jean Stapleton and Eileen Heckart.

“We got this jerky sub. she don't know a thing and she's trying to teach it.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part XI, ch. 54 (Miguel Rios)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 19 (unnamed student)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part VI, ch. 29 (Samuel Bester)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“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.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part I, ch. 2 (Bea Schachter)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part X, ch. 51 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue."
"What did you do for her?"
"I gave her a cup of tea."
"Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?"
"Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something."
"But you're a nurse," I said helplessly.
She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE…
Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part V, ch. 26 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors and metal stairways, dingy cafeteria (they can eat sitting down only in 20 minute shifts) and an auditorium which has no windows. It does have murals, however, depicting mute, muscular harvesters, faded and immobile under a mustard sun.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part I, ch. 5 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“Paul asks how I would have handled a love letter from a student. I don't know — by talking, maybe, by listening. I don't know.
How sad that we don't hear each other — any of us.
Major issues are submerged by minor ones; catastrophes by absurdities.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part VIII, ch. 39 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“I don't allow anyone to talk to me like that.
So you're lucky — you're a teacher.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part I, ch. 1 (Sylvia Barrett and Joe Ferone)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“My words never reached him; I could almost hear them drop, one by one, like so many pebbles against a closed window.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part X, ch. 51 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher!”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part IV, ch. 24 (unnamed student)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“How can I take seriously such mimeographed absurdities as "Lateness due to absence," "High under-achiever," and "Polio consent slips"?
—SylDear Syl,
I'll match yours any day with "Please disregard the following."”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

—Bea
Part IV, ch. 23 (Sylvia Barrett and Bea Schachter)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“Being a female, she spurns him on.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part VI, ch. 30 (Rusty O'Brien)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile?
Of every new disaster
I prove myself the master
By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file!
A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor?
For every major crisis
One remedy suffices:
More circulars, more circulars, to put into a drawer!A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute's hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt?I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 16 (Paul Barringer)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“"Why did you fail me? I didn't do nothing!" The reply, of course, is: "That's just it."”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part IX, ch. 42 (Bea Schachter)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“In Memory of Those Who Died Waiting for the Bell”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 15 (caption of a drawing)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them."”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part X, ch. 49 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“You teachers are all alike, dishing out crap and expecting us to swallow it and then give it back to you, nice and neat, with a place in it for the mark to go in. But you're even phonier than the others because you put on this act — being a dame you know how — and you stand there pretending that you give a damn. Who you kidding?
We're dirt to you, just like you're dirt to the fatheads and whistle-blowers who run this jail, and they're dirt to the swindlers and horn-tooters who run the school system.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part II, ch. 12 (Joe Ferone)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“Your lesson plan is excellent — except for the Emily Dickinson line: "There is no frigate like a book." The sentiment is lovely, the quotation is apt — only trouble is the word "frigate." Just try to say it in class — and your lesson is over.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 18 (Bea Schacter)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part II, ch. 10 (Jerry "Cutter" Hyams)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

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