The best goddam education to ensure a potentially fantastic future for a child, career wise but also to be a balanced individual - what does it include?
Here are some areas I came up with:
Stimulate a desire to learn and a desire to do. Yes, unfortunately a bit abstract to teach, but so crucial for everything in life that I think it is worth pointing out. If someone has these desires then they can improve anything in their life. I guess the way to teach it is to be a role model.
Learn to enjoy sports because a good life assumes health, and study after study show that people who physically use their body are more productive and healthy.
Learn additional languages early on because children pick up language very easily and much interaction and opportunities (later on) rely on communication. In this I include writing skills. I think they should teach langauages already in kindergarten.
Learn to read early on because reading opens up a possibility for the child to seek out information by him or her self.
Social competence because so much today is depending on other people around you. Society is so complex that nobody can make it all by him or her self. According to an investigation (here in Sweden) the absolute majority of job positions are filled via personal contacts. Friends and contacts is also a crucial way to get information about what is going on. The best way to “teach” social competence is probably to let the child be with people who share similar interests.
Cooking because it is a skill needed pretty much every day.
In these days, I would definitely add; computer-knowledge. How to seek information and use both computers and technical gadgets in general - because those who e.g know how to properly use, say, M.S Word or who can “type with all their fingers without looking” (I don’t know the word in English) have a definite advantage when producing or presenting written text.
Speaking of presenting; presentational skills is often crucial to cummunicate ideas and opinions. The shyness (be it genetical or learnt) should be trained away from an early age so that individuals have the ability to speak up when they need to.
Natural sciences - but actually not the natural sciences themselves, IMO, but rather the rational thinking and the scientific approach (and principles behind stuff). For this reason I don’t think it is necessary to “split up” the natural sciences into “math/physics/chemistry/…” at least not until much later in school.
Here are some areas I think there is too much focus on or a faulty focus on in schools (at least in Sweden):
Literature - it seems to be of limited value later in life. Good for Trivial Pursuit but very few, others than those who continue to study or teach it, have use for whatever it was that so-and-so wrote.
History - should perhaps be taught from a more political and psychological perspective to understand why powers do what they do, and also to understand our role in the world and in the time.
Chemistry - why the heck did we learn that stuff? C6H12O6 - that’s sugar if I recall correctly. Of course, there is some basic stuff that is important to know, but on the whole it had too much emphasis.
I don’t know about religion in your areas, but (being an agnostic) I think the focus should be on perhaps philosopy and ethics rather than a belief system that the children are too young to make a fair decision on weather to believe or not anyway.