Understanding Class

In the previous lesson, students began reading An Inspector Calls, exploring the setting and its significance by annotating the stage directions, and examining character through the consideration of symbolic props. This introduction gave them a basis from which to engage critically with the content of the play, and began the process of examining the author’s craft and the play’s larger message. 

In this lesson, students will develop their understanding of the sociohistorical context of the play, focusing specifically on class, etiquette and hierarchy. By deepening their knowledge of the social expectations of the world in which the characters live, students are better able to understand the choices the characters make and the consequences of those choices. This analysis of the play also helps students to consider how our opportunities, choices and values are intricately linked to the social environment in which we are nurtured, and how our identity is both forged from, and influences, our experiences. Such exploration and awareness is a necessary step towards self-reflection and encourages students not only to learn from the characters’ behaviour and choices, but to reflect on modern social norms and their implications. Given the potentially sensitive nature of the class discussion, we recommend that you review your class contract with your students to remind them of the importance of how they communicate their ideas with others. 

In this lesson, it is important for students to understand that class is a social system which divides people into groups according to their economic and social position. In the United Kingdom, society is divided into the following classes: 

• The working class: those who engage in physical work, are often only paid for the hours they work, and tend to be paid less than other groups in society.
• The middle class: those who tend to be well educated (they have attended university) and work in roles that require specific skills or qualifications. They tend to earn more money than the working class, but are not regarded as rich.  
• The upper class: those who are of the highest social status (they may have aristocratic titles such as duke or duchess, lord or lady) and they may possess great amounts of wealth, though this is not always the case. 

Currently in the UK, social class is regarded as less important than it was before the Second World War, but it can still nonetheless impact opportunities and status: it can influence the way others view us and dictate where we fit in the social hierarchy. Different social groups are also expected to behave according to specific social norms and are bound by the etiquette – the codes and norms of behaviour – of their social grouping. Stereotypically, the people of the upper classes are believed to possess the best manners. 

The activities in this lesson refer to pages 1–5 of the Heinemann edition of An Inspector Calls.

Before teaching this lesson, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.

Activity 1 Reflect on Social Hierarchies in a Journal Response

• Explain to students that today they will be learning about class and exploring how social hierarchies manifest themselves in the play and in the world today. It might be useful to review your class contract and remind students of its content to ensure that they are mindful of how they share and communicate their ideas on this potentially challenging topic. 
• Project the following prompts and ask students to explore them in a journal reflection. Let students know that they will not have to share their ideas with others if they do not wish to do so. 
  • Have you ever felt inferior to someone else? 
    • What did that person say or do that made you feel inferior? 
    • How did you respond to the situation?
• Have you ever felt superior to someone else?
  • What was it about the situation that made you feel superior?
  • How did you respond to the situation? 
• Before having volunteers share their ideas, acknowledge that it can be hard to share our ideas with others, and then model risk-taking by sharing something from your journal reflection with the class.
• As this topic is potentially sensitive for some students, reiterate that they do not need to share it if they do not want to do so.

Activity 2 Create a Concept Map for Class

• Tell students that unspoken rules in society, which often dictate our opportunities and experiences, can be connected to class. Most teenagers have heard the word class, but they might struggle to articulate a definition. Tell students that to help them reflect on their understanding of class, they will create a concept map, a visual representation of the word using words, phrases, questions, the space on the page, lines, and arrows.
• Lead students through the steps of the Concept Maps teaching strategy, first generating a list of words, phrases, and ideas they associate with class, and then representing the relationship between their ideas on the page using spacing, lines, arrows, colour, and sizing.
• Next, have students share their concept maps in a Think, Pair, Share. Invite them to revise their maps by adding new information they learnt from their ‘pair, shares’ that extends or challenges their thinking.
• You might then facilitate a discussion in which students share ideas from their maps for you to add to a class concept map that you hang in the room, refer back to over the course of this scheme of work, and modify as their thinking about class develops.
• Provide students with a dictionary definition of class and ask them to identify similarities and differences between their concept maps and the definition. Then explain the relationship between class, status, etiquette and hierarchy (see Overview and Notes to Teachers sections, above) and have students add these terms to their concept maps. Finally, ask students to share their ideas about where they placed status, etiquette and hierarchy, and how they connected them to other concepts on their maps.

Activity 3 Explore Social Etiquette

• Explain to students that they will be divided into groups and will be given a different piece of source material to explore social etiquette rules in Victorian England, which would still be relevant in Edwardian England. You may wish to give students access to dictionaries. Encourage them to keep their concept maps out on their desks and to add to them over the course of this activity if any new ideas emerge about class, status, etiquette and hierarchy that they hadn’t previously considered.
• Begin by dividing the class into small groups and give each group a copy of one of the four readings from the Social Etiquette in Victorian England handout. Depending on your class size, some groups may have the same one. 
• Explain to students that each group will read the group’s assigned reading together out loud. As some of the texts have difficult vocabulary and diction, it might be a good time to remind students of the reading skills they employed in the last lesson with the stage directions. Encourage them to pause to ‘talk to the text’ by asking questions and figuring out words in context when they are reading. You might also ask them to consider how this text connects with An Inspector Calls.  
• After they have read the text, ask students to briefly discuss and respond to the Connection questions on the handout.
• Give each group a chance to share their summaries of their given text with the rest of the class. 
• Finally,  lead a class discussion asking students to reflect on the following questions:
  • What does the existence of these etiquette books suggest about Victorian society?
  • How do you think people felt having to adhere to such strict codes of conduct?
  • Do we have anything equivalent to these handbooks today? 
  • How do we learn the spoken and unspoken rules of society? 
  • How does knowing or not knowing them impact an individual’s choices and/or their access to positions of power?
• If there is time, you may wish to close the lesson with a quick wraparound, in which students share one word to summarise their learning or something from today’s lesson that resonated with them.

Activity 1 Link Characters to Historical Context

• Explain to students that they will be reflecting on the characters in the play they have met thus far and how they are impacted by the class system and social system of the society in which they live.
• First, to get students thinking about the characters once more, ask them to complete a 3-2-1 activity in their journals to reflect on one of the characters introduced in the first five pages of the play:
  • Write down three adjectives to describe one character 
  • Write down two pieces of historical context that you learnt in previous lessons relevant to this character
  • Write down one rule of social etiquette that you learnt in the last lesson relevant to this character
• Give students the opportunity to share their ideas with each other using the Think, Pair, Share strategy.

Activity 2 Reflect on Hierarchy in the Play

• Tell students that they will now reflect on the social hierarchies present in the play. Encourage them to reflect on and incorporate their understanding of Victorian and Edwardian society, its social systems and its class structures, based on what they have learnt in previous lessons and in their other classes. 
• Ask students to work in pairs and list the characters in order of their social rank in Victorian and Edwardian society (1 being the most valued by society, 6 being the least). To ensure that students do not leave any characters out, you may ask the students to reread the second half of the stage directions to tell you who is on stage at the start of Act One (Edna, Eric, Gerald, Mr Birling, Mrs Birling, Sheila). 
• Ask them to select quotations from what they have read in the first five pages of the play to justify their positioning of each character, and to link their ideas to the historical context they have learnt on gender and etiquette. 
• Invite one pair of students to the front of the class to write their ranking on the board. Give the rest of the class an opportunity to engage with this rank order and to share what they have written. If another pair has a different ranking, invite them to the front of the class to reorder the list and share their justification. Continue this process as time allows, inviting pairs and individual students to contribute. Challenge pairs to support their rankings with evidence from the text and other historical documents you have studied in this scheme thus far. 
• Ask students to then reflect on the ranking by discussing the following questions in small groups of 3–4 students:
  • What have you learnt about what the society in which the Birlings live regards as important? How are the Birlings’ values influenced by society? 
  • What do these social hierarchies suggest about the power dynamics present in the play? Which characters do you think hold the most and the least power? What makes you say that?
  • What social hierarchies exist in modern society? What impact do they have on opportunities, behaviour and/or values?

Activity 3 Debrief on Class with an Exit Card

• Give students the opportunity to share their thoughts on class with you in a Class Debrief Exit Card, which uses the following prompts:
  • How might living in a society that has a class system impact the way people see themselves and others?
  • What impact might the existence of a class system have on society as a whole?
  • What are some ways in which the class system impacts your life and experiences? 
• Collect in these exit cards, so you can understand the students’ personal responses to studying the class system and follow up with individual students as needed.

Extension Activity  Reflect on Class

Since students have been exploring the concept of class, which is still present in society, it is important to give them a space to reflect on what they feel about it. Guide students through a Rapid-Fire Writing exercise, where they are able to write and consolidate their ideas and feelings on the following question: How can the existence of a class system impact our choices and values? What makes you say that?