As a result, it is the ordinary kids, which is the majority middle, who will hurt -- they think they learn something in high school and college, but they really don't.
That is purely a systemic problem, there's no reason that it couldn't be natural.
Also there's no support for you argument, its mere opinion and unsubstantiated conjecture based upon false premises, but stated like fact.
That's a bold claim. Evidence?
Gender bias in STEM? That's a god damn first-world problem.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321
"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."
Then, when wealth (and all other measures of gender equality) dramatically increase and people become free to choose to do whatever they want, largely free from economic survival pressure, suddenly, magically and inexplicably, "bias" pops up again.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
That's because you're not familiar with the actual data. Iran also has gender parity in STEM. The nordic countries have equal or worse gender ratios than America. It's called the gender equality paradox: the more gender equal a country, the less women choose STEM paths.
"South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for children ages 10-19 and extremely high elderly (60+) suicide rates. For children, most suicides are caused by stress relating to education. Korean children have a school year of 11 months and often spend over 16 hours a day at school and at afterschool programs called hagwons."
https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2017/10/31/the-scourge-of-south-kor...
India: India has an average income of $2134 per person. Not per month, per year. It has 872 million people living below the poverty line. One quarter of the population lives on less than 60¢ per day.
So I'd respectfully suggest that there might be good, ahem, motivation to try your best to get good at STEM even if you don't find it particularly natural.
That's another bold claim as support for the the thesis that STEM is "natural" for kids.
Remember: natural
First, China in general is not a free society, the state enforces what it wants its citizens to do, sometimes quite brutally.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/china
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
"Xi Jinping wields a level of social control not seen since Mao, posing a direct threat to democratic values worldwide"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/23/chines...
So using China as an example of "naturalness" of human behaviour seems at the very least wilfully ignorant.
So let's look at children and schools.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150611-chinas-parent-army
"For the past year, 18-year-old Zhang Hao has been studying for 12 hours a day. He spends a minimum of nine hours in class taking practice papers, then continues to study at home. His parents worry that he sometimes crams up to 17 hours work in to a single day. "
https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/18/china-sounds-the-...
"LIN MING, a ten-year-old who has two years left at his primary school in Beijing, does not remember the last time he returned home before 6pm on a weekday during term. As soon as school is out, his mother, Yang Mei, shuttles him around the city, dropping him off at tutoring agencies where he studies advanced maths and English grammar. Ms Yang accepts that she is “maybe putting a bit too much stress” on her son. But she has no choice. “Around 90% of my son’s classmates attend after-school lessons. It’s a competition I can’t lose.” "
"Chinese officials worry that pupils’ achievements may exact too heavy a mental and physical price"
"As long as admission to senior-high schools is based on results from the gruelling zhongkao exam, parents are likely to exploit every loophole to give their children an edge."
So, if you think that pushing kids beyond their limits with something like 16h work days in ways that negatively impacts their mental and physical health is a demonstration of "naturalness", then I just have to concede the point that this is all natural.
But then you have to also claim that schoolchildren killing themselves is also somehow "natural"
https://www.theglobalist.com/will-china-be-able-to-curb-adol...
"In the last few years, several studies have shown that adolescents and young people in China, Japan and other Asian countries have a large number of psychological problems that may lead them to commit to suicide."
"There are several causes for adolescent suicides. In many cases, suicides relate to fear of performing badly in exams."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19082026
>>Studying STEM is not natural to many kids
> That is purely a systemic problem, there's no reason that it couldn't be natural.
I don't think there's any intrinsic reason that studying STEM isn't natural. It could be hard to some kids while totally enjoyable to some others. I've seen kids enjoying building stuff and really engaged in their preliminary lessons for coding.
Think, things like being a designer, product manager, analyst, ect, ect, ect.
Even the job I do today, working as a web developer, is something that the "hardcore" programmers of 40 years ago, would likely look down on, as I do not fit into their traditional opinion, from 40 years ago, of what it means to work in STEM.
There will likely be more jobs like that in the future
The reason for this is because 40 years ago, you had to write everything to get something on screen.
The modern generation benefits from the foundational knowledge and be able to do more.
And to further expand this metaphor, I am sure that in another 40 years, there will be significantly more tools that will allow people to more easily develop things.
Such jobs would also be very valuable.