Education and Anger Theme Analysis

In “The Lesson,” a woman named Miss Moore moves into a poor area in Harlem and begins teaching a group of neighborhood children about a wide range of subjects, from basic skills like arithmetic to social issues like poverty. The narrator, Sylvia, is initially angry at Miss Moore because she finds the lessons boring and patronizing. She is particularly upset when Miss Moore takes the children to FAO Schwarz, an upscale Manhattan toy store, as a lesson in wealth inequality. But this educational exercise ends up reorienting Sylvia’s anger—by the end of the story, she’s angry not at Miss Moore, but at the fact that wealthy people are able to spend exorbitant amounts of money on pointless trinkets at FAO Schwarz, while her own family struggles to make ends meet. This transition suggests that while anger can hold people back from learning, as it does when Sylvia first resists Miss Moore’s lessons, it can also propel them forward, motivating them to better understand issues and injustices that affect them directly.

At first, Sylvia is angry at Miss Moore because she finds Miss Moore’s teaching style patronizing and frustrating. Sylvia is resentful of Miss Moore’s college degree—which no one else in the neighborhood has—because she feels that Miss Moore uses it as a tool to control others and force them to listen to her (though, notably, Miss Moore never actually mentions her degree in the story). She also resents the patronizing questions Miss Moore asks, such as whether the kids in the group (who all come from poor families) know what money is. As a result, Sylvia refuses to listen to Miss Moore or to participate in the lessons, essentially allowing her anger and resentment to hold her back from taking Miss Moore’s points seriously. On the day that the group goes to FAO Schwarz, Miss Moore gives Sylvia five dollars to spend on the taxi fare and asks that Sylvia calculate a 10-percent tip for the driver. While Sylvia at first tries to figure out the tip in her head, she ultimately fails and instead decides to just pocket the tip and extra change as a way to get back at Miss Moore. This choice demonstrates Sylvia’s conflicting attitudes toward Miss Moore and education. She’d like to solve the problem to prove her own intelligence, but she is also willing to give up on learning to calculate percentages just to make herself feel like she’s defeating Miss Moore. Later, outside the toy store, Sylvia is so intrigued by the toy sailboat in the window that she asks Miss Moore about the cost of a real boat. Miss Moore responds by telling Sylvia to research the question on her own, which is frustrating for Sylvia, who wanted a simple answer to her question. She isn’t at all interested in finding the answer herself, again allowing her anger at Miss Moore to usurp her desire to learn new things.

However, the trip to FAO Schwarz is a lesson that gets through to Sylvia, as it presents an alternative target for her anger: the injustice in her society. The first instance of this new avenue for Sylvia’s anger comes when she reads the high price tag for the toy sailboat at FAO Schwarz: $1,150. Sylvia doesn’t seem to understand her anger in this moment, but it’s implied that she’s upset because she’s confronting the inequality between poor people like her (who can barely afford basic necessities) and wealthy people who can easily afford toys like the sailboat. This shift is actually a result of Miss Moore’s hands-on method of teaching, though Sylvia doesn’t seem to realize this either. Miss Moore forces Sylvia to encounter wealth inequality firsthand—an issue she’s never had to think deeply about before—and, in doing so, pushes Sylvia’s anger in a new direction. Sylvia deals with another sudden and confusing surge of anger when she witnesses her friend Sugar touch the toy sailboat in the store. Some of her reaction is based in jealousy, but it also seems to be rooted in the anger and shame she feels because of her poverty. She goes to Miss Moore to ask why Miss Moore brought the children here—and, perhaps, to get an explanation for her own unexpected feelings. But Miss Moore again refuses to give Sylvia a straight answer. In this case, Miss Moore’s refusal is useful to Sylvia, as it forces her to spend time privately considering why she feels angry and what she’s learned over the course of the day. Indeed, the impact of these lessons is evident when, on the way home from the toy store, Sylvia again gets angry as she begins to realize that there’s a stark difference between her family’s financial situation and that of the wealthy people who shop at FAO Schwarz. She recognizes how unfair it is that the cost of a toy at FAO Schwarz could pay for her things her family really needs, like rent money or new beds. This new awareness of how wealth inequality affects her life shows that while anger and resentment can close people off from learning, it can also motivate them to better understand problems that impact them.

The concluding line of the story offer insight into the new perspective Sylvia has gained: as Sylvia storms away from the rest of the group, she thinks about the four dollars she has left from the taxi and reflects, “Ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.” By this, she seems to mean that no one is going to take her money away from her or prevent her from succeeding in life. So, by the end of the story, Sylvia’s anger is still evident—she’s is still defiant and fiercely independent. Yet here it seems that her target has become more productive, as she understands that her anger should not be directed at Miss Moore, but at the societal conditions that have forced her and her community into poverty.