What is a 21st century skill worth learning? Many think that it is programming and I.T.  However, what I am discovering is that 21st century skills worth learning stem from creativity and working with our hands. In an age where the output of our hands centre around keyboard inputs; I think we must ask ourselves if we are missing something.

With a school project to learn a Necessary Tradition and plenty of time during lockdown and in the months prior, I embarked on a mission to build an Earth Oven. Earth ovens have been a central part of communities for thousands of years. Food and fire, both centrally important to the human condition. With those ideas in mind, I began planning how I would undertake this process. From the beginning I knew that sourcing recycled and sustainable materials was a key aspect of this project. And so far everything I have used has been repurposed. There are so many skills that go into building something seemingly simple.

The whole process so far has been an enormous learning curve and it wouldn’t be possible without the help of others. While I am not finished yet, I can safely say that there is a creative project-shaped hole in everyone’s life.

Kasper, Year 10

Kindlehill School

Kindlehill School is a K-10 Steiner School that sits on a hill above the Wentworth Falls Lake, in the Blue Mountains, NSW. We are an independant school working creatively and in a contemporary way, out of the foundation of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy for education.