The Lesson :: Analysis, Toni Cade Bambara

Throughout history knowledge, culture and information has been passed down at heart communities. Life lesson were often taught by older, wiser or formally educated people within the community. This idea still holds true today, especially in low-income communities as illustrated in the short story The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara. I am led to believe that story took place in a low-income community in the early to mid-sixties as African-American families moved to buzz off better opportunities, when extended families moved north as groups and then spreading out into their respective community (507). suffer Moore, who had obtained a college education, assumed this role within her community by saying it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones education (507). Initially the lesson of the day was the value of money, still quickly evolved into several different lessons for the children in attendance that day.Miss Moore begins her lesson by planting a seed in the minds of the children in the form of small parley such as what things cost, how much their parents made, how much they spent on rent and how money was not divided up right in this country (508). This got the children thought about the money that ordinary people within their community spent on everyday survival. Their field trip brings them to a fancy Fifth alley toy store F.A.O Schwartz (512), where they admire toys form the window. The children begin to notice the outlandish prices that the toys were being sold for, which further waters the seed embedded in their subatomic minds earlier. Their eyes settled on a sailboat displayed in the window. Its outrageous price tag read, one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars (510). surprise and taken back they could not believe that anyone would pay that much money to entertain a child, one child immediately asked, This boat for Kids, Miss Moore? (510). This growing seed in their minds sparks the question of, why some people ca n afford such expensive toys and not others, as they enter the store. As they finish in the toy store and get home, Miss Moore prods the children to see if they had grasped the lesson as she intended. Sugar, one of the children spoke and said You know, Miss Moore, I dont think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs (512). Miss Moore was elated to dominate that the message of social inequality had been relayed to at least one of the children.