“The Lesson” is an essay that looks at wealth through the eyes of a poor black girl whose education includes a trip to one of the world’s premiere toy store. The text discusses serious social issues and the uneducated views of life the narrator and her friends live. The teacher who takes them on the trip is trying to show the students that they can have a different life than the one they are so used too. The lesson is suppose to teach the students in order to get ahead in life they have become educated. “We start down the block and she gets ahead which is O.K.
Lit 1102 21 March 2011 The Lesson The lesson was one of the many touching stories written by author Toni Cade Bambara. The Lesson is a first person narrative told by a young, poor, black girl growing up in Harlem in an unspecified time period known only as “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish.”(Roberts 373). In The Lesson, a field trip is imitated by a woman who takes it upon herself to expose the unappreciative children of the neighborhood to the world outside of their oppressed community. Miss Moore is the women and the only person who is properly educated in her neighborhood. The destination of the trip is to an elegant toy store which is located in New York’s Sax Fifth Avenue.
Heading to the toy store in a cab, Miss Moore gives Sylvia five dollars and tells her to tip the driver 10 percent. The reason for this is to show how Sylvia can use math in her everyday life. The difference in the value of the prices of a toy-boat in Sylvia's neighborhood and Fifth Ave shows a prime example “Hand-crafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars” (268) Sylvia was in amazement when she read the price because she “can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube of glue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents....My sailboat cost me about 50 cents.” (268) Sylvia continues to contemplate on the different things that her family could have brought with just by having the toy clown in their possession. With a toy that “somersaults on a bar then does chin-ups just cause you yank his leg” can easily help her family “buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy.” “Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Granddaddy Nelson in the country.” (265) Just by having “thirty-five dollars would pay for rent and the piano bill too.” This shows that Sylvia is living in poverty compared to the people of Manhattan. They can easily buy a toy clown worth $35 while that same amount of money can help her
Paper # 2 “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, is told by a young, poor, black girl named Sylvia who is on her summer vacation. Sylvia and her friends are taken on a field trip by an older black woman named Miss Moore who recently moved onto the same block. Because Miss Moore has a college education, she feels it is her responsibility to keep the neighborhood children educated even on their summer breaks. Miss Moore is determined, on this day, to teach the children a lesson on the nature of money and the differences money can have on the many social classes. Miss Moore wants the children to understand that people who make more money can afford to purchase more expensive and higher quality things.
Adam Gopnik’s essay, “Bumping into Mr. Ravioli,” further examines mainstream assimilation but from the view point of a busy three-year old little girl. Gopnik details the busy life of his young daughter, Olivia, who creates an imaginary friend, Mr. Ravioli, who she uses to show how people in New York City hide themselves behind the rewards of busyness to assimilate into the mainstream. In today’s society, people are different in so many ways that a utopian society could never exist. The only perfect society that we can possibly have is a paracosm, and it can only exist in a child’s imagination and only for a short time. Even if a person feels forced to cover his or her true identity, helping to create a utopian society by assimilating into the mainstream will result in definite rewards.
Objectives: After this lesson the student will know how to use descriptive words in stories they write to make the story more interesting to the reader. They will write a story using these words. 2. Materials • Writing paper • Pencils and erasers 3. Standards: o Language Arts-Writing: Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process; Uses the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing o Language Arts-Viewing: Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media o Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
Daily exposure to stories helps children to learn the structure and style of a story, particularly learning stories off by heart and being read to by a teacher. In turn this will improve their own story and poem writing as the structure and style will become second nature to them. What has been written already on this research topic? The National Strategy ‘Talk for Writing’ is based on this but I don’t feel that it fully engages/enthuses teachers in the importance of daily storytelling or whether it has had a positive impact on Literacy learning in the classroom. 4.
The student can ask question such as: What the topic is about? Does the topic and sub topic support the book? The next step is reading. This is where the students read for comprehension and try to understand the text and main idea of the book or story. This stage is important because it determines if he or she can figure out the main plot of the story.
Mrs. Moore wanted to educate the children in the neighborhood about the world they live in. 5. There was this one girl name Sylvia who pretends to be very tough and would not take any mess from anyone around her. 6. One hot afternoon, Mrs. Moore took the children on trip to a toy store and was discussing the prices of each item.
“But I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be scared about?”(40). Once the kids are in they evaluate all the toys and are really stunned at the prices, $300 microscopes and $480 paperweights. They gaze at the sailboats and make comparisons to the toys they purchase and play with. They go on about what all that money could do for them in their households, “that much money should last forever” (34).