...Jaclyn Karpiak English 101 12 April 2012 Short Story Analysis: “The Lesson” Toni Cade Bambara, a Harlem-born author, embraces culture, community, and background through her short story “The Lesson”. She has the main character Miss Moore discuss the struggles African Americans have with Caucasians involving social class, poverty, and equality. For many years after the abolition of slavery, African Americans were still looked down upon and considered a lower social class in certain societies. Bambara uses language as a powerful tool for describing America during the 1960s through the eyes of a young girl named Sylvia, a proud, sensitive, tough girl who is far too smart to ignore the realities around her. Bambara uses language to establish a cultural setting and Miss Moore to teach her students how to be successful, no matter their race. This story reflects Bambara’s ethnic background and pride by using the same dialect that she used growing up in Harlem, New York. According to Bambara, she spoke African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a trait that imparts to Sylvia. African American Vernacular English adds realism and humor to Sylvia's narrative because it describes her ethnicity without directly expressing what it is. It is common for African-American writers to use AAVE to emphasize their political and social commentary, so it is appropriate for Sylvia to be speaking the dialect because the story takes place in the ghetto of New York where Sylvia spends her childhood...
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...In the short story, “The Lesson”, by Toni Cade Bambara, she shows that Sugar shows that she easily understands the point of Miss Moore’s lesson, but it does not affect her in a meaningful way. After the day full of activities, most importantly the trip to F.A.O Schwarz, the kids have a discussion with Miss Moore about their experience and thoughts about the store. Sugar talks about income and money, and her opinion about both. She says, “I think… that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?”. This shows that Sugar understands the reason that Miss Moore took them to the stores and to a different part of town. The value of money was very different between where Sugar...
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...Education is empowerment for children living in poverty because it helps them to understand the disadvantages of their poor life in comparison to the rich and shows that effective knowledge is the way to overcome poverty. Additionally, a proper education can inspire children to strive even harder for their success. In “The Lesson”, the author reveals to the reader the disadvantages of poverty in relationship to wealth through Ms. Moore's lesson. Ms. Moore chooses to take a group of children to the luxury FAO Schwarz toy store in order to show them the difference between rich and poor lives. She knows that the trip is only a chance to let children see another side of life in the same city and helps them realize the disadvantages of their poor life. Through the narration of Silvia, a leader of the group, a reader can imagine the low quality of the children’s lives. At the beginning of the trip Moore talks to the children about the value of money. She discusses the amount of money their parents make, and how much their lifestyle requires to spend: “So we heading down the street and she's boring us silly about what things cost and what our parents make and how much goes for rent.” (348). Moore points out the level of poverty in which the children live. It becomes more evident when the children describe their study areas at home. Just one of the children has a desk which can...
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...English 130 9/8/2014 Pollution It’s hard to navigate our world today without seeing an illuminated screen; we have graduated from the living room tube TV to a relationship with technology that often seems like a dependency. With each new great release of some sort of electronic, we cast aside our second hand technology. People tend to think of these electronics as not harmful to themselves or the environment. However the electronic waste that comes from these outdated electronics are a growing pollution that needs to be addressed. There is a reason why there are so many electronics in this world. It is because there is a demand for new cheap electronics. Companies are able to produce these electronics for way cheaper than what they actually cost. I think that there should tariffs on these cheap electronics to drive the price up, and the demand down. But since there are no tariffs, everyone these days seam to have some sort of smart phone. Most of my friends have a iPhone. Since there are two different kinds of iPhone chargers my friends all have different cords and no one can borrow from one another unless you have the right charger port. I have always thought this to be a very smart business move by apple, it gets new or old customers to buy more products from them that they need to run their new iPhone. Leonard writes about this same idea in her article “The Story of Stuff: Electronics”. Annie writes about this business move saying “Designed for the dump means making stuff...
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...Chattanooga Ice Cream Case. The Chattanooga Ice Cream case is a case study where senior officers of a food company have opposing views for turning a declining business around during a crisis. The general manager, Charles Moore is faced with several challenges. He has a consensus-oriented style that asks for his team’s opinion before making a decision. His style might not be the best for this situation. He is faced with choosing several competing ideas, managing conflict within his team and a quickly approaching deadline. Keywords: Conflict, Peer Relationships, Conflict Resolution Style, Group dynamics, Interdepartmental Relations, Management communication, Candor, Teams CHATTANOOGA CASE ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT 2 Charles Moore’s conflict resolution style, indecisiveness, and management of group dynamics drove his business unit to near failure. By modifying his style, Charles Moore can turn his team and company around from near failure to a profitable division. Case Analysis: Introduction – Background on Chattanooga Chattanooga Ice Cream, Inc. was founded in 1936 as a subsidiary of Chattanooga Food Corporation. The Ice Cream Division was one of the largest regional ice cream manufacturers in the United States. (Sloane, 2003) It had a reputation for producing, mid-priced, basic ice cream sold mainly in grocery stores. In the case study, the company has lost its third largest customer. Charles Moore, the division’s president, meets with his management team several...
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...In this quote, Wes Moore, the author, is able to travel to South Africa after being presented with a grant from the School for International Training to study “culture and reconciliation” in post-apartheid Cape Town. At first, Cape Town looked almost identical to American cities. Although, as Wes starts to leave from downtown and enters the township in which he will be living, he is confronted with a strikingly different landscape. Even though the situation in South Africa is more extreme, it reminds Wes of Baltimore and the Bronx. Rows of shacks stretch in every direction, and Wes notices that the poverty he’s observed in America is nothing compared to what exists in South Africa. At the house where Wes is staying, a short woman, Mama, welcomes...
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...Richter 1 Ryan Richter English V01B 7 March 2014 An Unwelcome Lesson In nearly all tales, myths and stories, a hero is set on a journey into the unknown. The hero acquires knowledge and skill, his mettle is tested, and by success or failure he learns something about himself or the world he lives in. Often the acquisition of skill and knowledge is obtained via the work of a guide or mentor. In both “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara and “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the protagonist is visited by a maligned guide who exploits their vulnerabilities, manipulating each towards a sobering epiphany, and thereby changing their world view for better or worse. Each of the two protagonists perceives their guide as a foe. In “The Lesson” Sylvia is a willful and irreverent young girl, who is immediately distrustful of her guide in the story, Ms. Moore. Ms. Moore is an oddity in the unnamed slum of New York. She always dresses like she’s going to church, she’s college educated, and inordinately concerned with the educational welfare of the children in her neighborhood (654)1. It is this outsider status that initially puts Sylvia on guard. However, Sylvia is not impervious to the machinations of her teacher. Though Sylvia loathes Ms. Moore’s condescending questions, they are ultimately effective in their goal. Sylvia is also vulnerable due to her need of a social medium. Sylvia is at the top of the pecking order among her friends, and has a sense of responsibility ...
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...race and current economic standing. Taking “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara into consideration, Dalton would praise Miss Moore’s teachings and tell Sylvia and her friends that they mustn’t listen to the classic “rags to riches” myths of most stories. In “Horatio Alger” by Dalton, Dalton argues that the myth of commercial success is not only false but socially destructive. Alger’s first claim is that “each of us is judged solely on his/her own merits.” Dalton proceeds to counter argue that this is only true when it pertains to white people. Dalton further believes that Alger’s formula for success is too optimistic and blind to the social and racial caste system of the world. When black people are only compared to people of the same race they cannot be held to the same standard as white people, which is true for other races as well. Stereotypes give society a basic conception of each race that is not based solely on their worth but on their position on the social scale and the color of their skin. This myth gives society the wrong expectation of each race and causes them to believe that certain races possess quality traits that others don’t. Overall, Dalton believes that one’s achievements will be acknowledged but their race and social standing will hinder their economic growth. The second principle that Alger believes contributes to ones success is that “we each have a fair opportunity to develop those merits.” Dalton shows that it can be difficult for someone to reach their...
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...: What makes a CIO job the most volatile, high-turnover job in business? How important is CIO leadership for the future success of companies? A: Early in our careers at the Harvard Business School, we discovered that the turnover of CIOs ran at around 30 to 40 percent per year. As a result of our research, we described the driving cause as the rapid change of IT through the operation of Moore's Law (IT cost halving every 18 months or so), which we thought would be short-lived. But when we looked at the turnover rates again a few years later, we discovered the rate was about the same, but the driving cause was more than just the rapid change in IT: It was also because IT was the nexus of major organizational change, the key enabler of business process redesign. Over the years, the CIO job has remained a hot seat in business and has, in turn, become a key management position in executing a company's competitive cost structure and strategy. It has become a key senior management position that can enable companies to transform their twentieth-century industrial organization structures to twenty-first-century information-based organization structures. Q: In your novel, though Barton had been willing to critique his predecessor for constantly fighting fires, he found himself facing the same dilemmas. Did it actually help him as CIO to know relatively little about IT? A: Among a few key differences between the management styles of Jim Barton (trained as a general manager) and his...
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...©1998−2002; ©2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design® and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". © 1994−2005, by Walton Beacham. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". © 1994−2005, by Walton Beacham. All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copywritten by BookRags, Inc. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher. Table of...
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...Lynskey has a greater use of reasoning and logic. Further, the evidence in “Kapow” depicts greater arguments. It makes use of various definitions, theories, opinions, examples of real life, scientific facts, as well as sources from other scholars to show how females have been used as secondary and dependent. For examples Ann Nocenti in “Kapow! Attack of the Feminist Superheroes” says, “Females characters are absolutely seen as secondary,” she says. I can’t tell I was just oblivious to sexism and misogyny”. (Lynskey) In that quote Necenti, one of Claremont’s editors’, tells how it made her feel to be a female in the comics. This example coming from a professional and being her real life experience shows a good use of Aristotelian appeals. Since it ensures and maintains credibility, trust of the author by relying on ethics and morals of the society. The manner in which “Kapow! Attack of the Feminist Superheroes” portrays women is of great Aristotelian...
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...Truth The short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is a story that brings to light the lesson of social standings in America. It also shows you how one person can help change the lives of the children in a community. The story is set in the slums of a larger city. The characters in this story are a group of young, uneducated children originally from the south. The children are taken under wing by an older women with a higher education named Miss Moore. In the story Miss Moore takes the children on a trip into New York city where she tries to show them how unfair our society can be, teaching the children lessons for life such as math and grammar. These lessons however are only there to lead up to the larger picture of her lesson for the day. During the trip that Miss Moore and the children took you begin to understand and get a feeling for how the narrator, Sylvia, felt about where she lived and who she was. Sylvia started out the story not understand or appreciating who Miss Moore was and what Miss Moore was doing for her and the rest of her family. She made fun of Miss Moore with her cousins because Miss Moore spoke proper and dressed differently than the other people whom lived around her. To Sylvia and even her cousins Miss Moore was a person that they disliked for reasons they didn't understand. She was different than the rest of the people in their lives. And to young children, that is reason enough for them to dislike a person. At one point in the story Sylvia made...
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...I. Invention A. Research resources I thought Wes did a decent job with his research. During the speech I noticed that He only used research that was from his book and from his own personal experience. The research that Wes used was very detailed and carefully documented especially for the other Wes’s story because while he was in prison the author Wes visited him so that he could learn his story. Another example that indicates the depth of Wes’s research is during the common read Wes stated that in the process of writing his book he would wake up a few hours before his next job to work on it. After Wes had given the speech people in the audience asked him questions. One of the questions that was asked was why at the end of the book did Wes...
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...Written during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Toni Cade Bambara's short story "The Lesson" tells the story of a young African-American girl named Sylvia and the important life lesson that she learns one day while on a trip to a toy store in New York. Her neighbor, Miss Moore, brings Sylvia and a group of her friends to F.A.O. Schwarz and while there, they come face to face with the injustices they face because of their backgrounds. Miss Moore does this to teach them a lesson, one that she feels that they need to learn in order to succeed in life and overcome any obstacles they may face. Bambara identifies with race through class and demographics, using a trip to a pricey New York toy store to expose Sylvia and her group of friends to the reality of their classed society. Sylvia tells us "Then we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy." (89). She discovers that the rich, upper class whites don't dress like African Americans, even though the weather is the same. She realizes that they have money and a tendency to flaunt just how wealthy they are. "'Must be rich people shop here,' say Q.T. 'You are a very bright boy,' say Flyboy. 'What was your first clue?'" (92). One of the children in the group was able to identify with the demographic of the area, recognizing that only people with status and wealth would be able to buy the expensive toys in the store. Bambara gives the reader...
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...122 Harvard Business Review | July–August 2007 | hbr.org Marcos Chin The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present. EOPLE AT COCKTAIL PARTIES are always asking me for stock tips, and then they want to know how my predictions have turned out. Their requests reveal the common but fundamentally erroneous perception that forecasters make predictions. We don’t, of course: Prediction is possible only in a world in which events are preordained and no amount of action in the present can infl uence future outcomes. That world is the stuff of myth and superstition. The one we inhabit is quite different – little is certain, nothing is preordained, and what we do in the present affects how events unfold, often in significant, unexpected ways. The role of the forecaster in the real world is quite different from that of the mythical seer. Prediction is concerned P by Paul Saffo Six Rules for Accurate Forecasting Effe c ti ve t i MANAGING FOR THE LONG TERM | Six Rules for Effective Forecasting 124 Harvard Business Review | July–August 2007 | hbr.org with future certainty; forecasting looks at how hidden currents in the present signal possible changes in direction for companies, societies, or the world at large. Thus, the primary goal of forecasting is to identify the full range of possibilities, not a limited set of illusory certainties. Whether a specific forecast actually...
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