The good surface realism of "The Blackboard Jungle" hides its lack of depth. Hunter lays to rest for all time the notion that high-school teaching is simply a white-collar job with "short hours and long vacations." Education, for thousands of boys in New York City, is often a violent hypocrisy, prime examples of which are the "trade schools" set up as depositories for the unmanageables of the academic school system.

The original reason for establishing these schools was sound enough: adolescents who could not, for a variety of psychological and social reasons, profit from academic education should be given the opportunity to learn useful skills. But the schools swiftly degenerated. Relegated to the oldest buildings and poorest neighborhoods, they became the Siberia of the educational system for teachers and students alike, and the inevitable result was self-perpetuating violence and cynicism.

Evan Hunter breaks through the verbiage which has...