You are asking for a Soviet-style curriculum and we can learn from their experience. The lesson here is not quite clear-cut unfortunately. Making something mand

You are asking for a Soviet-style curriculum and we can learn from their experience. The lesson here is not quite clear-cut unfortunately. Making something mandatory for everyone at the same level doesn't make it feasible. The Soviets themselves were very clear about it and had an impressive system in place to look for what in America is called gifted children. To begin with, can you actually employ all those future engineers and scientists? China can. America arguably not so much unless some major 30-year old trends are dramatically reversed. Are your engineers and scientists respected and well paid professionals? What are the projections for the next 30 years? Again, outside of CS probably so-so. In any case, there can be only so many high-IQ jobs. And so many scientifically-minded children with high enough IQ. So a reasonable educational system would find them and promote to higher-quality schools for sure. At least in a world where your people want to be competitive with, say, the Chinese. But there are the other 80% of population and they won't be able to cope with a stringent STEM program. So they would need an alternative curriculum, probably similar to how they orient such people towards trade schools in Germany. Math is universally useful both to grow your mental capabilities and professionally. Sciences are less so unless you are planning on an engineering career. And even then people who are into chemistry are frequently not the same who are into physics who are different from those interested in molecular biology. Which again breaks this nice uniform idea of mandatory STEM! for everyone! Where I agree with you is that the less STEM there's in schools the more political indoctrination there will be instead disguised as "liberal arts and humanities". So forcing children to stretch their minds in math classes while they are young is the least damaging thing that can happen to you in school.