Up The Down Staircase

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

teachers but no time to teach.

We have keys but no locks (except in lavatories), blackboards but no chalk, students but no seats

man's reach should exceed his grasp" I once taught. This implies the inevitability of frustration. Not to lower my sights, not to compromise; to accept the "challenge," to keep fighting, to find rewards even in failure because failure is due to aiming too high; not to give up, for all the leather chairs in Willowdale.

Yet I'm told that Calvin Coolidge is not unique; it's as average as a large metropolitan high school can be. There are many schools worse than this (the official phrase is "problem-area schools for the lower socioeconomic groups") and a few better ones. Kids with an aptitude in a trade can go to vocational high schools; kids with outstanding talents in math, science, drama, dance, music, or art can attend special high schools which require entrance tests or auditions; kids with emotional problems or difficulties in learning are sent to the "600 schools." But the great majority, the ordinary lads, find themselves in Calvin Coolidge or its reasonable facsimile. And so do the teachers.

TO WHAT SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO?
You are to me a Sunday morning smelling of frying bacon and promises of more. You are to me a racing car at 95 miles per hr. that no one else has. You are to me a lazy curtesan in her feminine bed room with ostrich feathers fanning her brow. You are to me a fresh meadowland. You are to me the sounds of the City that spell a band of gypsies with tamburines and hunking cars and tooting trucks’ symphony or the hot beat of Rock n Roll that jerks a thousand feet. You are to me the end of the line. But what am I to you?

THE MURDERER
I saw him scuttling like a crook, making his fearful way, stelthy among the dirty dishes crustied with grease in the sink, bearing a morsle of food to his secret sons behind the drain board. How fearful were his eyes. Shall I kill him?
(Mrs. Schachter—Is it clear I am talking about a cockaroach?)

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Like most sayings, this is only half true. Those who can, teach; those who can't—the bitter, the misguided, the failures from other fields—find in the school system an excuse or a refuge.