"The Blackboard Jungle" is that rare combination—a problem novel in which both the problem and the novel are intensely interesting and in which both elements are blended so skillfully as to be inseparable.

Evan Hunter's problem is New York vocational schools, where, as he presents it, all the students who are not intelligent enough to qualify for academic high schools are shunted by the city. The author, who has himself taught in one of these schools, gives a shocking picture of dullness, profanity, disrespect and violence among both the students and the faculty. "This is the garbage can of the educational system," one of the older teachers told Richard Dadier during his first day's work as an English teacher at the North Manual Trades High School. "And you want to know what our job is? Our job is to sit on the lid of the garbage can...