the lesson

ENG 101-101

MR NEURBURGER

SHAWN STACYE      

1-25-13

“The Lesson”

By Toni Cade Bambara

The story starts out with a group of African American kids growing up in a poverty stricken neighborhood, with bad grammar, and a low level education. The kids have neighbors that they bad mouth, but 1 in general is miss more. They secretly like her, but she is so different because she has a college education and is always trying to give them daily lessons. So in the heat of summer she takes all the kids on a taxi ride making 1 figure out the tip for the driver and trying to keep their minds active. She brings them to a toy shop where they huddle around the windows to look at the toys and recite the price tags. They see a sail boat that is over a thousand which infuriates 1 little kid because its more than what their food cost total. They all go in and the lesson she was trying to teach them is that they can have what they want if only they have the desire and want to work for it. She tries to push these kids to live and perform outside of their social group. If they act like where they live then all they will amount to is more poverty and no future