Hyper-Individualism is Affecting Our Ability to Engage

For Sita, In a Common Hour is an opportunity to evaluate the education system and the intricacies of its role as a training ground for adult life.

Key Points:

When it comes to life’s defining seasons, the years we spend at school are some of the most profound. Studying sits behind what happens to us in the lunch break, the social politics, hierarchies and teachers we can’t get along with.

Sita Walker has been a high school literature teacher for over 20 years, more recently becoming an award-winning writer for her memoir The God of No Good, and now releasing her debut novel In a Common Hour.

The novel follows the activities of a single lunchtime where one student’s misguided choice upends the dynamics of the school community, prompting discussions about masculinity, truth and social cohesion.

“Developing character strengths and virtues such as forgiveness, sincerity, truthfulness, kindness, justice, peacefulness is not just a nice idea,”

For Sita, In a Common Hour is an opportunity to evaluate the education system and the intricacies of its role as a training ground for adult life.

“Developing character strengths and virtues such as forgiveness, sincerity, truthfulness, kindness, justice, peacefulness is not just a nice idea,” Sita told Hope 103.2’s UNDISTRACTED podcast.

“It is really, really vital.”

However, teaching character isn’t as straightforward as biology or maths, it’s something that’s picked up in how lessons are delivered, or problems are solved in the context of the work being done.

Hope 103.2 is proudly supported by

“Children are great mirrors for teachers,” Sita said.

“The only way I can think to educate kids about character in a classroom is to show it.

“Some people think character should be taught at home; I try to teach it through literature.”

Over the years, Sita has observed students placing a higher importance on the words they speak to one another, realising their impact and power.

“Every word that we utter and we put out into the universe has a power,” Sita said.

“Teenagers especially are very interested in the power of naming things.

“There are words that they don’t use. There are words that they do use. They know words have power [and] there are words that they want to strike out of books historically that have been used that they don’t like.”

In a Common Hour may only have one lunch break to tell its story, but it’s filled with extraordinary moments of conscience, struggle and care. Sita’s goal was that it would make us more aware of life’s present, and immediate, significance.

“In the Western world, [we have a] terrible pull towards materialism and individualism,” Sita said.

“We have this tremendous drive and ambition towards fulfilling our particular destiny and being exactly who we think we are. And in that way, we’re always living in some kind of future.

“I think what will connect us more to these small moments is to bring ourselves into the present.

“In a way, that’s what the book is trying to do too, is to say, if you look at your life minute by minute rather than year by year, what is it that you’ll see that you hadn’t seen before?”

In a Common Hour is out now.

Listen to the full episode if UNDISTRACTED with Laura Bennett in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Feature image: Supplied (Sita Walker and Management)