“The Lesson”, by Toni Cade Bambara, is a short story which shows that while education is a powerful and essential tool for changing one’s circumstances when it comes to social status, it is ultimately how we are affected internally by the things we learn that matters the most. It isn’t as simple as merely being educated or working hard. Hard work doesn’t necessarily guarantee success, and education doesn’t necessarily influence change. The psychological effects of poverty can lead individuals to feel trapped in their circumstances, and oftentimes an equal amount of luck is needed in addition to hard work, emotional and mental resilience, and education to overcome the obstacles to financial security.
Economic status can cause people to feel
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A. O. Swartz store. It’s easy to see by her statement that being exorbitantly rich to the point of spending money senselessly is viewed as a “white person” problem. According to statistics presented by “The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation” and “The United States Census Bureau”, minorities suffer a higher rate of poverty. It would seem being born with extra melanin, on its own, could set a person back on their path to success, so it isn’t far-reaching when Rosie Giraffe makes this …show more content…
When faced with such an example of frivolous spending, it could easily serve to make someone of lower income feel like they were catching a glimpse of another world entirely…a world from which they were unceremoniously excluded by reason of circumstance. Living in poverty can lead a person to feel overcome with hopelessness when comparing their own lives to the lives of the wealthy. This can result in a lack of motivation to improve circumstances since the future isn’t easy to envision while dealing with immediate stress. As professor of psychology, Elliot Berkman puts it, “Worrying about tomorrow can be a luxury if you don’t know how you’ll survive