The short story 'The Lesson' by Toni Cade Bambara is one of the most famous pieces in her writing career. It deals with a number of issues that society faces today, mainly inequality and alienation.

In this short story, Sylvia is an African American girl who lives in a slum. She is a young girl who is trying to learn from her teacher Miss Moore.

This woman is very intelligent but also quite odd. She takes the children of Harlem on a journey and shows them all kinds of things. For example, Sylvia was able to look at a sailboat that cost one thousand dollars.

She was a little upset at this because she thought that rich people would be able to buy this type of boat. However, she realized that this was a waste of money and that it could have been used for a lower class family's needs.

Another important lesson that Bambara is conveying to the readers of this short story is that money separates people and that inequality is still a big problem in this country. This is shown by many different instances within the story.

In this story, Toni Cade Bambara uses her character Sylvia to show the reader that inequality and alienation are very real. She does this by showing that the rich can buy expensive things while the poor cannot afford them. She tries to show that it is okay for Sylvia and her peers to be angry at the fact that rich people can have the things they want, but it is wrong for them to feel excluded from the world because of their background.