Cereal on bananas or Up
the Down Staircase
Bel Kaufman died on July 25, 2014. She was 103. Born in Germany
and raised in the Ukraine she learned English at age 12 and emigrated to the
United States. She graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College and earned a
master’s degree in English from Columbia University.
The New York City Board of Examiners consistently refused to
give her a license to teach because of her Russian accent. She worked for years
to overcome this and ultimately got her license. On the side she worked as a
writer. In 1965 she published a novel that became a major film and turned her into
a celebrity: Up the down Staircase, -
“a portrait of a young city school teacher battling a soul-crushing bureaucracy
and a blizzard of inane rules.”
Each of us likely has an up-the-down-staircase impulse that
surfaces from time to time. Just something that says go against the grain. For
me the impulse is to put cereal on bananas.
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| The bananas on cereal rule learned as a child is not
embedded in concrete. |
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| Cereal on bananas |
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| A little extra fruit. |
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| Cereal on bananas - Up the Down Staircase |
