Bel Kaufman - Up The Down Staircase

Sylvia!

No chance to stop by today.

My classes are being covered while I'm in auditorium, presumably blocking out Faculty Show. Actually, I'm writing my own version of Calvin Coolidge Gilbert & Sullivan. It will never pass by the censors, but may win a smile from you. Which is all I ask.

Teachers will play kids. What do you think of this number, for instance—played by our talented trio: Henrietta Pastorfield, Mary Lewis, and Charlotte Wolf?

In counterpart, the boys—played, I think, by Loomis, Manheim and McHabe:

It's good to get out of the classroom, away from vapid faces blinking at me. You have one of them in your homeroom—Alice something—who bathes me in long, liquid glances. Lord preserve me from puppy crushes. My taste runs more to Chaucerian-scholar types.

Meet me at The Tavern after school? I need to get blotto. Got another "Thank-you-for-letting-us-see-your-clever-manuscript-unfortiinately" letter. My characters are too improbable, they tell me. My setting, too exotic. Well, why not? One must escape.

This is no job for a man—or woman, either. Unless, like Clarke, you can spend the day sitting and knitting your brows. Here's one for him:

I would have included his Message to Garcia speech, but the only rhyme I could think of was Marsha. And I don't know who she is. Too bad.

It's a memorable speech, an apt commentary on school. Everyone rushes urgently around to get the message in on time. But no one knows what the message is.

Why do you refuse to be in my show? You don't even have to sing.

Paul

FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.

TO: ALL TEACHERS

Do not accept lateness excuses due to fire on the BMT today. This was checked by me with the Transit Authority. There was no fire on the BMT today.

JJ McH

TO: ALL TEACHERS

Polio Consent slips are due in Health Office before 3 P.M. today.

Frances Egan

School Nurse

CIRCULAR # 42

PLEASE KEEP ALL CIRCULARS ON FILE, IN THEIR ORDER

TOPIC: PPP AND EMOTIONAL PROFILE EVALUATION

TO ENABLE THE TEACHER TO GAIN A MORE PROFOUND INSIGHT INTO THE EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS OF EACH STUDENT AND TO ACHIEVE A GRASP, IN TOTO, OF THE SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS SHAPING HIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND PERSONALITY GROWTH, THE GUIDANCE OFFICE, AS A RESULT OF THOROUGH DEPTH-INTERVIEWS, HAS EVALUATED THE WHOLE CHILD IN RELATION TO ALL HIS AREAS IN THE PPP ON EACH PRC.

ELLA FRIEDENBERG

GUIDANCE COUNSELOR

FROM: The Health Office

TO: Miss Barrett, Room 304

CONFIDENTIAL MEDICAL REPORT

Copy to: Mr. McHabe Miss Finch

Rosen, Linda, of your official class, will be out of school until cleared by the Board of Health. Wassermann positive. She is to be carried on your register under Temporary Suspension.

Lazar, Evelyn, of your official class, deceased two days ago, of infection following a self-induced AB, as attested by the Medical Examiner. She is to be taken off your register permanently.

Frances Egan

School Nurse

Oct. 16

Dear Ellen,

Evelyn Lazar is dead. That's the girl who asked to see me the day of the Faculty Conference. Perhaps if I had, she would be alive today. She died of an infection following an abortion she had tried to induce with a knitting needle, after she had run away from home. Now she's but a name to be removed from the homeroom register. Permanently.

Paul says: "Sauve qui peut! Think only of yourself. Getting involved does them no good."

Bea says: "You're not God. Nothing is your fault, except, perhaps, poor teaching."

Henrietta says: 'If you've kept them off the streets and given them a bit of fun for a while, you've earned your keep, such as it is."

Sadie Finch says: "Hand in before 3 locker number and book receipts for Lazar, Evelyn."

Ella Freud says: "Environmental influences beyond our control are frequently the cause of emotional disequilibrium."

And 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 flared, 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 lads, 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? How much of the guilt is ours?

There was a discussion in the Teachers' Lunchroom about it.

Mary Lewis was shocked at the moral laxness of young people today. Surely, she said, the overworked teachers couldn't be expected to add chaperoning to their long list of chores. Henrietta Pastorfield had nothing against sexual freedom—provided it was in the open. Had the girl been in her class, this wouldn't have happened; her kids confided in her because she spoke their language. Fred Loomis said—sterilization —that's the answer. Sterilize them and kick them out of school. Bea Schachter spoke of love; that's what these children were starved for. Paul Barringer disagreed. They can't handle love, he said; they know nothing about it. Amused detachment is the only way to remain intact. But we cannot remain intact if we teach, Bea said. And we must teach—against all odds, against all obstacles, in the best sense of the word. Nuts, said Loomis; kids don't belong in school.

There we sat in the jungle of a white porcelain table with an artificial rose in a plastic vase upon it, and a sign on the wall advising us to remove trays before leaving, each stalking his own path through the underbrush. After a while only Mary, Henrietta, Paul and I were left in the lunchroom. I tried to speak, but Mary cut me short:

"I started out like you, too, but I found there's nothing you can do, so you may as well give up. Just wait till you've been here as long as I— You work yourself to the bone, and no thanks from anyone. The more you do, the more they expect of you, and it's the same in other schools, believe me. Here at least we have Sadie Finch and a couple of Aides to help, but no one really cares, and they just pile more and more on you. I've got no blackboard and they never fixed my radiator, and they stuck me with three preparations and Remedial Reading, and with the Late Room and the Junior Scholastics; and they made me volunteer to be Faculty Advisor to The Clarion, and I have to travel from the 3rd to the 5th floor with my varicose veins. In 23 years I've never been a minute late; I'm always the first to hand in reports—ask Finch—and I never complain; I just do my work, though everyone knows I have the worst homeroom kids in the school, and it takes all my energy just to keep them quiet—before I even start teaching!"