[6thaccount2]

While I can't speak for other commenters, I wonder if we aren't speaking past each other a bit.

I don't think anyone should be coerced into a field of study and I'm not sure if the "army" quote from the other poster should be taken literally. I read it as you should make sure society has enough in that basket to maximize welfare for all, but I could be interpreting them poorly.

When I hear arguments for STEM, what I and many others generally mean is that the pie-chart for things studied in school (Math, Language, Literature, History, Geography, PE, Sociology, Science, Art, Religion, Music...etc) should be tweaked a bit to where the Math, Science, and Technology subsections are bigger. If that means reducing the rest of the courses by some small percentage in order to do so, then so be it. Note that I'm not talking about eliminating anything entirely.

Regardless of chosen profession, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be better off by being more scientifically and mathematically literate. At this point you might ask if the same couldn't be said for other subjects like music and I would disagree. Although all learning and knowledge should generally be considered a blessing, scientific reasoning is a force multiplier. Think of all the ignorance regarding vaccines, climate science...etc.

[corodra]

Yes, that's why I put it in quotes. There should be an appropriate sized pool of specialty-whatever to be effective in a society. But also plus some. Just so you don't have an accidental brain drain. But output is important too. Even though there's lots of hate for commercialized farmer. It now takes less farmers to make X amount of food for a larger amount of non-farmers. But, we can also argue quality and environmental impact of said practices due to such wide scale farming practices.

I think this might have been the early definition of STEM or I'm just an idiot. But I thought it was Sci, Tech, Engineering and Medical. Math just seems redundant to me in that. Because those 4 career fields are for the most part, all well paying and technical. So... yea, I guess... But also, I'm not for the end of art class or anything like that. I actually think music and art need to have a better focus of doing rather than just the history to students. Good for the soul, if you will. Something I've been working on myself recently.

Well, you know the saying that anything technologically advanced enough to someone just seems like it's magic? To me, that's exactly why people need to at least dip their feet into all STEM.

And I think you said it best. Things like philosophy, the humanities and so forth, are a force multiplier. However, no matter how large the number is multiplied against 0, you still get 0. I think STEM is your base score and the rest are force multipliers. My opinion.