In Part 4 of Rethinking Popular Culture and Media the fourth chapter, May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor: Teaching class and collective action with The Hunger Games (p.234) by Elizabeth Marshall and Matt Rosati, describes a series of lessons that use The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins to help students explore oppression as a byproduct of social classes and the power of the collective action of young people.
The Hunger Games presents a critique of economic injustice and capitalist ideals and a version of a large collective led by youth. This emphasis on organized youths coming together to force change and fight oppression creates relevancy for my students that have experienced and/or witnessed real-world examples of this. In their lessons, Marshall and Rosati had two goals: challenge students’ stereotypes about social class and encourage students to see connections between the class struggles that exist in the novel and the class struggles that exist in society.
The initial activities described in the chapter were designed to support students in developing a foundational and agreed-upon understanding of social class, the stereotypes associated with different social classes, and the implications of social class from their diverse experiences. After establishing the necessary background knowledge, Marshall and Rosati used the students’ knowledge of the social structures and characters from the novel to have students analyze real-world class conflicts that influence modern society. Students read about a labor strike from the early 20th century and were then asked to consider how a similar situation would unfold in the context of the novel. To wrap up their lessons, Marshall and Rosati asked students to reflect on the decisions they made on how the characters would behave. In these reflections, students connected back to their understanding of social classes and their influence on power, both real and perceived.
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