Education for STEM subjects

Wall St Journal ran a op-ed about this yesterday.  The authors criticized American schools up one side and down the other.  But, their complaints didn't resonate with me.  The trashed both science and mathematics education for being "fifty years out of date". They trashed computer science for just teaching software and not teaching anything about the electronics that make the CPUs tick.  And they plumped for teaching "discrete mathematics" starting in sixth grade.
   The "fifty year old" slam doesn't mean much to me.  Isaac Newton laid out the foundations of physics 400 years ago.  They taught it to me in high school and I found it very useful through out a long career in electrical engineering.  I know the modern physics, quantum mechanics and Einstein, but most practical problems in the real world can be solved with plain old fashioned Newtonian physics.  Every kid ought to learn them.
    Knowing how computers work inside at the transistor level is useful, especially if you are going to design computers, but software is a large field, employs a lot more people that hardware design, and I know a lot of very decent programmers who have zero knowledge beyond software.
   They also push for teaching "discrete mathematics" ,a new term to me.  Boolean algebra is what we use for digital design, but unless the student knows ordinary algebra, Boolean algebra won't mean much to them.
   My prescription for better education is simple.  Merely require all high school students to take one year of physics, a year of chemistry, and a year of biology.  Even if the student has no desire to take a STEM major in college, they need some basic science to understand our increasingly scientific world.
   Plus, it should be the duty of all teachers to make sure high school freshmen under stand that they have to take the right mathematics in high school if they want to get into STEM majors in college.  All the STEM majors require integral calculus, and many require differential calculus and transform methods.  If the student isn't ready to take integral calculus freshman year in college, he is out.  All the STEM courses have calculus as a prerequisite.  You have to get your calculus in freshman year so you can take the STEM courses sophomore year.  Which means the student needs to have algebra, geometry,and trigonometry  under his/her belt during high school.  The integral calculus course won't mean anything if you don't have the prerequisites.