The Lesson
by Toni Bambara
February 10, 2003

 Throughout our early childhood, we are taught many important lessons in life. Our close friends and relatives may either tell us stories whose main purpose is to teach us a lesson or use other types of methods to impart wisdom. "The Lesson," written by Toni Bambara, is about a pre-teen girl named Sylvia and how she reacts to Miss Moore, her babysitter. The lesson is learned through a field trip. 

Sylvia's assessment of Miss Moore at the beginning of the story was that Miss Moore was a spooky person because of her strange name, appearance, and habits. She was a person seemingly always talking nonsense. However, by the end of the story, Sylvia seemed to have a different and distinctive view of Miss Moore. This as mainly due to her exposure to a new side of Miss Moore during a field trip. The field trip led her to view her life differently. Maybe there is more to things than meets the eyes of the beholder. After all, life is not always what it seems. 

As to name and appearance, Miss Moore was described as "The only woman on the block with no first name, and she was black as hell, 'cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky" (Bambara, 134). Also, Miss Moore had got her college degree and always dressed properly like she was going to church. However, she never did go to church. Sylvia acknowledged all those things, but hated it. 

As to habits, from the tone of her opinionated speech, Sylvia probably thought that Miss Moore was being smart allecky. Miss Moore seemed to be ridiculous to her, because she always was asking stupid questions. An example is "Miss Moore asking us do we know what money is, like we a bunch of retards" (Bambara, 135). Of course, Miss Moore's manner was to let the kids comprehend the value of money, but Sylvia took it the wrong way. Sylvia blindly misunderstood Miss Moore's intentions. Miss Moore was trying to let the kids and Sylvia recognize that they were poor, but Sylvia does not want to see it: "She gets to the part about we all poor and live in the slums, which I don't feature" (Bambara, 135). Sylvia doesn't see herself or consider herself as poor. She thinks, "She's boring us silly about what things cost and what our parents make and how much goes for rent and how money ain't divided up right in this country" (Bambara, 135). Miss Moore's apparently nonsense questions and comments and remarks about society exhausted her. 

Another habit, and problem for Sylvia, was that Miss Moore always planned dull things for the kids to do. One of them was field trips. For example, one day she decided to take the kids and Sylvia to F.A.O. Schwarz, a toy store. This store sold very expensive toys, which really were out of the question to purchase, they were so extraordinary.  Before Miss Moore took them inside the store, the kids had a chance to look in the store windows. Sylvia was amazed and speechless at how expensive the toys were, especially one of the toy sailboats that she saw. The price tag on the sailboat was one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars. That amount of money could feed a family of six or seven people for a year or more.

Before entering the toy store, Sylvia hesitated. At first, she didn't know why she felt the way she did, but it just happened to her. Miss Moore had exposed the kids to a different, sumptuous type of lifestyle. It was an eye-opener for the kids, telling them about the relative values of being rich and poor in a compelling way. It made Sylvia mad, because she always thought of her life as good enough. But by looking at those expensive toys, she was forced to feel much less of herself.

Miss Moore then asked the kids to imagine, "What kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven. What do you think?" (Bambara, 136). As Miss Moore looked at Sylvia, Sylvia was thinking that Miss Moore looked at her with grief and melancholy. So Sylvia was speechless and walked away. Sylvia kept quiet the rest of the day, although really she was thinking the whole day through and thought to herself that nobody ever again was going to beat her at anything. 

This field trip, which Sylvia had imagined would be so dull, changed her life and taught her "The Lesson." Sylvia also changed the way she looked at Miss Moore after this field trip. We can tell by the way that Sylvia kept quiet and did not stubbornly argue at the end, as she often did. The field trip exposes the girl to a world, and an attitude, and a society that she has not had to confront before. Her babysitter, Miss Moore, has been exposed to that world and thought about it a lot. But she cannot just tell people about its injustices and attitudes, she has to show her charges what it means to them. Children must learn for themselves through their own feelings and emotions, as they see more and more of the world. It is important for them to have guides that expose them to new ideas.

Sylvia comes to see that her babysitter is thoughtful and has dignity, as she herself becomes more thoughtful. (It is interesting that the author used only the last name for Miss Moore and only the first name for the girl.) She also sees what her babysitter's appearance and words mean. She discovers an anger and insight that she shares with Miss Moore now. Also, she sees Miss Moore as a window onto a larger world and a way to enter that world. 

Sylvia knows she has learned a lesson but does not talk about it. So perhaps also she still considers her babysitter strange. She probably also does not want to acknowledge the lesson learned. She does want people to know that field trips might be valuable. This probably is also connected with her sense that Miss Moore is outside her sphere of experience.

"The Lesson" also reveals the relations of young blacks of that era to educated blacks who came back with new ideas about religion, justice, and equality of opportunity to the South. Perhaps that is the main lesson for us to learn from this story and reveals Sylvia's assessment of Miss Moore as indicative of a larger set of attitudes shared by many blacks of that time and place. The ending of the story shows how those new ideas were received by blacks in general.