Education anon here… STEM is just the latest attempt to integrate the curriculums of science, technology, engineering and math to supposedly inspire kids to want to excel in the practical application of them. Nice idea - sounds great - but the fact is there are too many bad implementations out there that push glitzy and glamorous approximations of learning rather than real and significant accomplishments. Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad - great teachers have been doing a great job teaching our students for centuries. Mediocre teachers and bad teachers (have always existed) just pay it lip service to get by and don't actually meet the program goals.
However (and this has always been true), great students will learn and go beyond what their teachers teach them. Learning is their natural state of being.
To reform education, we need a system of tracking, that gives the best resources to the students who will use them to the maximum. Students who are not enthused with learning need to be taught survival skills (reading math logic arts) plus practical skills that will make them marketable in the job market.
HOWEVER – if a student suddenly is a late bloomer or just one day wakes up and wants to start learning more, the tracking system needs to allow for jumping tracks - that is, a student in a skill development track needs to be able to try the cognitive development track if they become motivated to learn.
In the reverse, a student in a cognitive development track should be able to transfer to a skill development track if they get burned out on the theoretical and suddenly would rather just do things with their hands.
There should also be an arts and philosophy track to develop students who have gifts in those areas.
In order for the above to happen, there would need to a real revolution in educational theory, because the traditionalists and the PC crowd both would not accept the above.