The Foundation for Learning for the Rest of Your Life

If you have practical persuasion and a deep understanding of some complex topic, I think you'll have a great foundation for learning for the rest of your life. The five most important skills are of course reading, writing, arithmetic, and then as you are adding in persuasion, which is talking. Then finally I would add computer programming, just because it's an applied form of arithmetic that just gets you so much leverage for free in any domain that you operate in.