I agree that we need more and better STEM education but I'm not sure we're in the same place we were in the 1950's. There were huge education reform programs af

I agree that we need more and better STEM education but I'm not sure we're in the same place we were in the 1950's. There were huge education reform programs after Sputnik that added more homework and introduced lab science at the high school level, and the goal of these programs was to provide a foundation for future scientists and engineers. In later decades, different goals have been prioritized; rather than providing a foundation for the brightest minds to become the scientific leaders of the future, education policy since the 1960's started to focus more and more on using education to improve social equality and improve the lot of disadvantaged populations. In recent years, the latter approach has reached the reductio ad absurdum of some school districts abolishing eighth grade algebra classes for reasons of racial equity. What I am genuinely curious about is how similar the current state of STEM education is to the state before Sputnik. My impression is that Sputnik was a massive sea change that never actually got completely reversed; for instance, I've heard that before Sputnik, high schools weren't even teaching trigonometry, let alone calculus. I've found sources that attribute lab science in K-12 to the Sputnik reforms, as well as an increase in homework (which had actually been abolished by 1900's progressives). And if that's true, then yes, let's still improve science education, but let's also acknowledge that things possibly aren't quite as bad as they were in von Neumann's time.