Thinking how a few weeks ago I signed off an email to students explaining why seminars were postponed with a quote from An Inspector Calls: "We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other"

I often wonder how out of place that sounds these days

(Obv left out the next line about "the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish" as they probably had enough on their plates already)

If you've not read/watched An Inspector Calls, it's a post-WW2 set in 1912 where a wealthy family are questioned about a working-class woman's death which it transpires they all had a hand in bringing about (sacking her for union organising, refusing charity etc)

The point of the play is to show how we're all connected and inculcate the kind of collective consciousness necessary for postwar social democracy. It seems relevant today with the virus highlighting how our health is not private but bound up with numerous social questions

When I worked in a secondary school, however, this was prob the biggest obstacle to getting students to understand it. The irony of teaching a play about instilling the culture which would underpin the welfare state at a time when the welfare state has been massively undermined

So going over this passage, there were sometimes issues with language (themselves rather telling). Questions from pupils would be "what's 'labour trouble'?", "what's 'capital'?" and, imo most significantly, "what's a 'miner'?"

This speaks to how the base for social democracy has been eroded: industry has been dismantled & with it the working-class political/cultural life organised around it, to the extent that 35 years after the miners strike a w/c North London teenager now asks "what's a miner?"

But more than just the aspects of a now almost completely lost social life, even the cultural assumptions underpinning the play's ethical framework was completely alien to them. I remember pupils being asked "who are you responsible for?" and they responded, in unison, "Myself."

This isn't a 'kids these days' gripe; this is a product of decades of neoliberalism and 'why-should-I-pay-for-you-not-to-work-or-for-a-service-I-never-use?' discourse. And, prob most directly relevant for these kids, from the individualistic and atomising way school is structured

We hammer them day in, day out, with individualism and personal responsibility and then, out of the blue, we put this text from another era (which sometimes feels like it's from another planet!) and tell them "We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other"

Obviously not saying we should chuck An Inspector Calls from the curriculum coz it's not relevant to the world anymore. The opposite, in fact: we should chuck this world and make one more relevant to the collective culture of An Inspector Calls!