Choices within Choices: Splitting STEM into Two, the Future of Education?

Me, and a great friend of mine had a talk about education one night. In the middle of it all, he said something about the idea of having the choice between a medically-focused strand or an engineering focused strand; kind of like fragmenting STEM into two to better conform to the student’s preferred field. I thought that his idea was very interesting. My friend’s idea of diversion delivers a great array of advantages, like for example: it’s much more tailored to the student’s preference. Say if we are to focus solely on the medical field, the student would have a greater idea on the field itself, hence giving him/her greater preparation for the course itself. He/she may even be more motivated to push through, knowing that he/she chose the correct strand for his/her dreams. Most STEM students I have met wanted to go to a course related to medicine however, some of them (like me), are struggling with mathematics; a subject that some of us deemed unnecessary for our future courses. Of course, some form of mathematics and the more fundamental ones are absolutely necessary but, the more technical ones such as Calculus are the ones some of us found quite cumbersome; a problem that is then removed if said idea was a thing.

While my friend’s idea really is interesting and advantageous in some aspects, I also thought to myself that around teenage years, we are still yet to find who we really wanted to be. STEM is made to be somewhat general to give students the chance to find what they really wanted in the future. If we are to split STEM into two, it might be highly likely that students are to be confronted with a much more difficult decision way before they enter senior high school so, I think STEM is fine as-is right now.