Toni Bambara conveys how education is the means by which one can elude poverty in The Lesson. In this story all the children identify with race, economic inequality, and the importance of education in that day and age back in the 70’s. The children of Harlem come face to face with their own reality and poverty. The practicality of society’s social standard was made aware to them on a hot afternoon day trip to a toy store called F.A.O Schwarz. The children all begin learning the separations of society as they step out of their taxi onto Fifth Avenue. The children in this book are not presently aware how race somewhat put them as less than to the other people on Fifth Avenue. As soon as they step out of the taxi the children see how much different their lives are from the other people walking around. Slyvia even states “..everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy” (643) showing they see they difference. She sees that the white people have money, because there after another one of the children says, “Must be rich people shop here”(645). The toy story the children had in their neighborhood was much different. The children found it hard to comprehend why a white person would spend so much money on a toy boat that they could buy at their toy store for fifty cents.…show more content… In their eyes, whites had more than them and in that time, that was true. The children didn’t have the same clothes, homes, churches, or even toys as the white people. Now that they see how the people on Fifth Avenue live one of the children states “how money ain’t divided up right in the country.”(643)It is also made aware to them that there was a separation of wealth even amongst themselves because some had their own desk space at home while some didn’t. Economic inequality was established to these children by the social status of what they did and did not