The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara: Social Economics and Education

Miss Moore as the Living Lesson

"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara tells the story of a college-educated woman who moves into an African-American neighborhood and begins organizing educational field trips for the children who live there, including the unnamed narrator, her friend Sugar, and various friends and cousins. To the children, Miss Moore puts on airs — she speaks "proper" English, dresses as though she is going to church, and insists on taking them on outings when they would rather spend the summer at the movies or the pool. The children resent her for it.

While Miss Moore organizes all kinds of outings, she herself is the lesson. She is a concrete example to the children that academic success is possible: they can do well in school, go to college, and — by inference — obtain a good-paying job. Miss Moore has enough money not only to cover her own rent and necessities but to share experiences with a large group of children. She hands the narrator a five-dollar bill to pay for the second taxi as they all ride to mid-town Manhattan to visit FAO Schwarz. At the end of the story, the narrator has pocketed more than four dollars in change — quiet proof that Miss Moore has genuine discretionary income.

Crucially, Miss Moore does not deliver her lesson by lecturing the children about the virtues of hard work and higher education — though she does lecture them. She demonstrates possibility through her own existence, and she ensures the lesson takes hold by repeating these trips. She is, in effect, a living curriculum.

Sub-Lessons in Social Economics

While Miss Moore is the overarching lesson, she also provides sub-lessons. On this particular day, the lesson concerns social economics. She takes the children to an exclusive toy store where they encounter $1,200 versions of the fifty-cent sailboats they know from their own neighborhood. As they examine price tags throughout the store, the children observe that "this must be where rich people shop" and remark that "White folk crazy." They quickly realize that their meager allowances could never accumulate enough to purchase even the least expensive item in the store.

It is not enough for Miss Moore simply to show the children that she holds a decent job and can afford two taxis. On this trip, the children discover something larger: that some people possess enormous amounts of money, and that wealth is not distributed evenly among all people.

The Children's Resistance to Miss Moore

The children do everything they can to avoid connecting with Miss Moore. The narrator deflects her significance by blaming Aunt Gretchen — the adult who keeps allowing Miss Moore to organize these trips — characterizing Gretchen as someone who goes along with whatever anyone says. Because the narrator has a strong personality and does not respect people who seem to capitulate easily, she extends that contempt to any situation Gretchen endorses. At the story's opening, the narrator describes Miss Moore as "this nappy-head ***** and her goddam college degree" — hardly a promising start for the day's lesson.

Yet little by little the children begin to notice things. The store is stocked with items that are not merely unaffordable but priced at levels that bear no relationship to anything in the children's experience. When they discover a $480 paperweight, Miss Moore speaks about the importance of keeping one's desk organized. The children know perfectly well that none of them own desks, stationery, or paperweights, and the comment strikes them as absurd. What Miss Moore is actually doing is inviting them to ask: what kind of person spends $480 on a paperweight, and what would it take to become that person?

Conclusion: 'Ain't Nobody Gonna Beat Me at Nuthin'

The narrator is angry at Sugar and not yet ready to articulate the lesson she has absorbed. Yet her closing declaration — "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin" — suggests that something has shifted. Toni Cade Bambara leaves the narrator's future deliberately open: will that competitive ferocity be channeled into the kind of ambition Miss Moore hopes for, or will it remain unmoored? Miss Moore, no doubt, hopes the narrator will find a way to make that declaration true not just in a footrace with Sugar but in the larger contest of life itself.