The Lesson Essay

“The Lesson” is a short story written by Toni Cade Bambara in 1972. Toni Bambara was an African American writer born in the early to middle 1900’s. She was known for having fiction short stories based off the more feminist side of her life. However, the theme is more based of the realistic takes of life on the unfairness of socioeconomic status in America. Though hard to get directly into it was an interesting read. The story is told in first person narrative from the life of an African American girl named Sylvia. The short story discusses the problems she faces in life from appearance issues, equal rights, and shame. “The Lesson” was an intriguing story filled with history, told by a fictional character on a toy story journey to learn a lesson of equality.

In the short story “The Lesson”, by Toni Cade Bambara, Miss. Moore, an college educated woman new to the community, takes it upon herself to teach academics and life lessons to young Sylvia and her friends much to their dismay. During a visit to F.A.O. Schwarz, Miss Moore educates the group about the disparity that exists between socioeconomic statuses. During the course of this lesson, Sylvia realizes that she feels shame and anger about the inequality she experiences in her life. The central idea of the story is inequality; an internal conflict exists for Sylvia because of the inequality she experiences in her own life.

Toni Cade Bambara’s The Lesson is the examination of how proper education in Americans poverty stricken societies can impact the outcome of becoming wealthy or remaining in poverty. In this story Miss Moore, the antagonist, is trying to get Sylvia, the protagonist, to realize that she could be so much more if she obtains an education. Sylvia does not want anything to do with Miss Moore and her lessons. The story is about a group of kids that have grown up in the Harlem slums, in poverty. Most of the kids seem to be content for the most part with living in poverty, because that is all they have ever known.

During “The Lesson,” it is the children who display the majority of the profanity, along with the rude and cruel actions. When they arrive at a toy store on the other side of town, Sylvia, the protagonist, and her friends discover a microscope which spark their interest. Their care giver, Miss Moore, attempts to interact with the children. As a result, Sylvia quotes her

She uses her education and ideas to challenge Sylvia to use her talents skillfully. This makes Sylvia uncomfortable. Her physical appearance and proper speech also make the society uncomfortable. As Miss Moore takes the kids to the toys shop, she educates and gives them fair knowledge about economic inequality between the whites and the blacks in the country

life is unfair and unjust. They hate what they cannot attain, yet still want it. This leads both Sylvia and Abner to destructive behavior. Being an adult, Abner is both more aware of what he feels to be an undeserved disparency between classes, and more direct in expressing his anger about it. Abner steals, burns the barns of his employers, and ruins their possessions. He is also considerably more violent, seeing nothing wrong with hitting his son across the face to teach him a lesson. Sylvia's anger is much more subtle. She is still young, and has not endured all of the suffering that Abner has. Her hate is less tangible, her anger directionless. She is confused by the injustices she see's, and does not know how to express it. Sylvia fights to keep from developing the clear cut ideas Abner has about class, and instead expresses her anger in any direction. Miss Moore receives a fair amount of this, coming to be scorned by Sylvia because she is educated. Sugar also feels Sylvia's anger, when Sylvia "stand...[s] on her foot so she [won't] continue" to talk to Miss Moore about

Then Miss Moore wants to take them inside the store, in the front were Sylvia and her friend are in the lead, but then suddenly stops and says to have this feeling of shame where it is seen in the following, “when we get there I kinda hang back. Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of,just a toy store. But I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be shamed about? Got as much right to go in as anybody. But somehow I can’t seem to get hold of the door, so I step away for Sugar to lead. But she hangs back too. And I look at her and she looks at me and this is ridiculous.” (Leeson). Here we can clearly see, Sylvia is coming to feel the situation they are, but doesn’t seem to get to the conclusion yet. Towards the end at the end Miss Moore explains how “that the poor needs to wake up and demand their share of pie…” (Lesson) meaning at their time the society has been very unequal and that everyone deserves the right share. At the end, Sylvia comes to the realization but never wanted to admit it, and so the teachings of Miss Moore towards the kids was for them to see for themselves through the experiences in such society that can be changed if they work hard and get an

Miss Moore takes the children to a toy store named “F.A.O. Schwarz” where they seem overwhelmed by the expensive toys and even by a white woman wearing a fur coat during summer; the children develop the general opinion that the “white folks crazy” (Bambara). Browsing through the different toys and their prices makes Sylvia a bit jealous and angry. She knows that she cannot afford them and gets mad at Miss Moore for bringing the class to the toy store. The trip to F.A. O. Schwarz was needed because she was teaching them the main lesson of the story.

I think that a person could suspect what the ending of the short story “The Lesson” is based on the opening paragraphs. The reader could predict that Mrs. Moore is going to educate the children on something important by the end of the story. One factor that supports this is how in the beginning of the story, Sylvia talks about Mrs. Moore being a college graduate, and is the person who would always take responsibility for the children's education. Sylvia’s family would make her dress up anytime she was with Mrs Moore because her mom doesn't want her kid to look bad in front of someone who is important. This shows that Mrs. Moore is an educated and reliable person. Then Mrs. Moore and the kids come around a mailbox in the neighborhood. She asked

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” (George Harrison) Although things can come from the past, they must be put to use in the know, and although we like to plan for the future, we need to try and make an impact now. What George Harrison is trying to say is that while it is nice to try to set things up for the future, we need to use what was given to us from the past, to try and better the lives of other immediately. In The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson, the piano was the object from the past is being put to use now and his having a profound impact. The piano is very important to Berniece’s family, it is an irreplaceable item that is

The biggest theme I found in The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara was poverty and wealth. Throughout the story it is clear that Sylvia and the rest of the kids and their families are poor, living in what seems to be the ghetto. Miss Moore is a young educated black women who tries to show the Sylvia and the children that they, being part of a disadvantaged group, need to think about the distribution of wealth in the United States.

The Lesson is a short story about a family of African American children. The children are cousins to each other, living in a low class neighborhood. Miss Moore is the tutor to these cousins. None of these from the family of cousins cared for Miss Moore. One day all children with Miss Moore hired a cab to Fifth Avenue. All these were gathered outside a toy store looking at the toys. All the children were confused and feeling out of place. Miss Moore asked the children about their experience. Sugar, one of the children commented on the amount of food consumed by all in one year that equals the price of one sailboat toy at the store. Sylvia, another important character does not like Sugar's comments and tries to stop her until Sugar pushes Sylvia off. Sugar believes that there is no democracy in the country in the presence of such inequity. The main aim of the story was to show economic inequity in the society in the 1960s.

Lessons, They’re many of them that we need to and can learn about in life even if they seem pointless. Well I learned a very important lesson back when I was young I think it’s still very important to this day. I’m in 4th grade and I was still young and didn’t know a lot of things during that time and also thought like most kids that school was miserable and just wanted to get through the whole day. It’s about time to go when our teacher announces that we are going to be learning about bicycle safety tomorrow and if we have our own bicycle we can bring it. My head perked up and I was paying a little attention to what she was saying and it sounded a little interesting to me but there was a problem with this. I had my own bicycle but the only thing is I didn’t know how to ride it well more like I didn’t know how to keep my self balanced. Since I didn’t know how to keep myself balanced on a bike I decided that I wouldn’t bring a bicycle and just walk through the lesson but I had a heavy feeling in my chest that urged me to learn

Energy is the ability to do work. It has the potential to make changes, and any changes are due to work being done. This is significant because work can generate energy, and energy itself can do work (i.e., work done on windmills by the wind produces energy, and energy is used in homes to do work).

I planned a lesson for my grade three students. This lesson was based on creative writing on Advertisement in content to Urdu language learning. I used variety of methods and students were practicing the target language in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I selected the learning objectives, designed appropriate learning activities and developed strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. I prepared different ways of explaining students like real-world examples, short video clips, practical applications and probing questions to catch the student’s attention and appeal to different learning styles. I planned activities, estimated how much time I will spend on each activity. When I explained the topic I checked student’s understanding about specific feedback questions in different ways to respond orally or in writing. First I conducted a motivating brainstorm activity for how communication takes place was used as a starter and warm up. A web was drawn through learner responses .Images shown on the multimedia comparing old and new ways of communication which were relevant and well selected. Objectives were introduced and a video was presented that enabled students to reflect on communicating information through advertisements. A worksheet was given to students to fill in their responses about means of communication. Printed pamphlets, flyers and posters were distributed amongst students to explore Urdu Language phrases and sentences in ads, invitations to public