Ever since the early 1980s, when the term ‘century skills’ was coined, it has been used by governmental, academic, and corporate entities. When the 2000s started, it evolved in the term ‘21st century skills’: Skills such as digital literacy, ethics, how to detect and handle digital threats and increase your chances at the ever-changing job market are the skills all our people should learn. Why are they so essential? Why is it so hard to teach them effectively? And how can we properly integrate them in our education system? All of these questions shall be explored and hopefully answered, but for now, they remain mostly uncharted waters. Bob Smeets studied in various schools across Europe, each with their own education system, including schools in Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and his home country, Netherlands. During his studies, he was lucky to have had the opportunity to teach at two high schools in the Netherlands and one in Sweden. He works in for a stock trading company in Amsterdam. He has a major in Business and IT. And in his leisure time, he works for a project called BES that teaches kids about the value of money, and runs a website for information about student events across the Netherlands. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx