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In "The Lesson," by Toni Bambara, consider the fictional world - both the literal, physical environment, and the interior world of the main...

“The Lesson” is a story about economic inequality and education. It’s also a finely drawn psychological portrait of children growing up poor—particularly the narrator, Sylvia. While the physical setting of the story—New York City—helps bring out the difference between rich and poor, it is Sylvia’s inner state—how she thinks about things—that undergoes a radical change.


The children and Miss Moore live in what she terms “the slums,” although Sylvia takes exception to that description. To...

“The Lesson” is a story about economic inequality and education. It’s also a finely drawn psychological portrait of children growing up poor—particularly the narrator, Sylvia. While the physical setting of the story—New York City—helps bring out the difference between rich and poor, it is Sylvia’s inner state—how she thinks about things—that undergoes a radical change.


The children and Miss Moore live in what she terms “the slums,” although Sylvia takes exception to that description. To Sylvia, her neighborhood isn’t poor–it is simply the place where they live, the place her family came when they all “moved north” together, living at first in the same apartment. She doesn’t really know any better, and at any rate she is too busy figuring out how she relates to the other children in Miss Moore’s “class”—and giving Miss Moore a hard time—to worry about it.


It’s when Miss Moore hails two taxis to transport them all to Fifth Avenue in Manhattan that Sylvia begins to notice how her neighborhood might be different. First, she notices that everyone is “wearing stockings” and sees one woman in a fur coat (“White folks crazy,” she says). Then they look through the window of F.A.O. Schwartz, and one of the children (Big Butt) sees a $300 microscope that he says he will buy. The other children make fun of him for wanting a “learning instrument,” and Sylvia also mentally tunes out Miss Moore when she commends Big Butt for wanting to learn—(“Blah blah blah. And we ready to choke Big Butt for bringing it up in the first damn place”).


What begins to happen at this point in the story is that the external world Sylvia finds herself in–the toy store in Manhattan—is affecting her internal worldview. That is, as she starts to realize that the store is part of an affluent world she doesn’t belong to, she also begins to stop being oppositional and start thinking critically about her place in the world. The key moment in this transformation happens when Sylvia and Sugar gawk together at the $1000 sailboat. Sugar touches the boat, and Sylvia thinks, “I’m jealous and want to hit her. Maybe not her, but I sure want to punch somebody in the mouth.” Then Sylvia asks Miss Moore, sharply, “Whatcha bring us in here for, Miss Moore?” She’s mad, first because she realizes that somehow Miss Moore has tricked her into learning, but more than that, she is mad because, as Sugar puts it, “all of us put together in a year don’t eat what that sailboat costs”—Sylvia wants to know “who are these people” who can afford such things. As Miss Moore says, “Where we are is who we are,” and living in the slums makes Sylvia and her friends the the type of people who can’t buy expensive toys. Sylvia is beginning to understand that, and to figure out ways around it. As she says at the end, “nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.”

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