There are the years when we begin our formal education. We acquire the basic skills - reading, writing, working with numbers - that we’ll use throughout our lives. We also form our ideas about our own self-worth from the way others treat us during these years. They can convince us we’re worthless, or they can teach us we deserve love and respect.
Most important, from my point of view, these are the years when we develop our moral sense of what’s right and wrong. Others teach us about good and bad, but later in our early years we begin to decide for ourselves. We need a good foundation in these subjects. Otherwise, anything we try to do later will be undermined by our lack of skills. Perhaps the most important thing we can learn during these years is how to analyze information and use it. These are skills that will always be useful.
