I believe that, to truly succeed in life, humans need to develop and purposefully direct their own minds and behavior. If they can learn how to start doing that as children; then they’ll have a great advantage. The 8-fold path might provide some guidelines. It starts with adopting an accurate or at least functional view of life and its purpose, then with the setting of constructive and realistic goals and plans based on that view. Next comes self discipline and moral training; proper speech, right conduct, and work ethic. All of the various child rearing and education models, it seems to me, attempt to cover those things in some way or another. Finally, there is cultivation of the mind, an area where Buddhism offers a tremendous advantage. There are three kinds of meditation training; which respectively address three areas of cognitive development — motivation, visuospatial awareness, and abstract reasoning skills.