Okay, having taught at high school and university, and having had a pretty shitty time at high school, I've got plenty of ideas here.

First, I'm being utopian, and assuming that education from kindergarten to university would be fully funded as far as need be. I'd also assume that the entire structure would change: our education system is woeful, being designed over a century ago to mass-produce clerks. It matches neither our nature nor our current culture.

That said, here's what I think would be vital areas throughout school:

1) Basic finances and statistics, so kids learn what money means and how not to get into trouble, as well as being able to spot some of the fast ones the government pulls;

2) Basic life skills like first aid, nutrition, cooking (and washing dishes!), exercise, and basic legal stuff. Give them the basics to survive;

3) Logic and critical thinking, so they don't get fooled by marketing, and don't get sucked in by all the stupid things the government does (I'm in Australia, and our government is only slightly less stupid than yours ;-);

4) Independence and problem-solving, along the lines of something that David Suzuki described at the end of Good News For A Change, so that they learn self-reliance and how to deal with things they've never faced;

5) Environmental studies, which includes end-to-end food production and manufacturing, so they don't think milk bottles materialise at the supermarket and vanish from the bin.

Obviously all this would have to be taught in a very different way to the current 'chalk and talk' method, which is itself a big problem: kids learn very shallowly when they're writing stuff down and rehearsing to pass tests.