We have missed the opportunity to be leaders in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) disciplines, and as a result we will become increasingly dependent on importing skills. In short, we're dead in the water, writes David Braue.

In the 1980s they were called nerds. In the 1990s they were called entrepreneurs. By the 2000s they were being acknowledged as the architects of the information century. So how can it be that in 2016 - one-eighth of the way through that century - we still lack a coherent national strategy for developing and tapping into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent of our next generations?

The easy answer is that, despite the fact that apps are cool these days and everyone is online, most people still have no idea how the internet actually works. Despite hundreds of millions spent on student laptops over the past decade, most of today's graduates still have few technology skills beyond the use of Facebook and Microsoft Word. They are not only not engaged with technology, but give it almost no thought at all beyond the superficial.

So-called information-technology teaching is focused at such a high level that students are not being taught to actually understand much of anything. Even as schools struggle to modernise their technology usage, many teachers are still struggling to incorporate rudimentary IT tools in their teaching and many openly avoid the type of brain-twisting work involved in STEM subjects.

That is not to say that we are not producing talented scientists, engineers and technologists - but I would wager that in most cases, such graduates are succeeding despite our educational system, not because of it. Successful global brands like Atlassian, RealEstate.com.au and Xero are being driven not by people who were steered into STEM subjects in school, but by entrepreneurs whose natural curiosity has driven them to question the world around them, and to innovate their way around obstacles they present.

This natural curiosity is the heart of STEM education, and it's the same trait that drove the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs whose relentless curiosity has shaped the world we live in. It's the same thing that the nerds of the 1980s had in abundance, and retained despite being marginalised by a society that was busy learning the mantra of mindless consumerism rather than the mantras of curiosity and invention.

Sadly, our prime minister Tony "I'm no Bill Gates" Abbott represents living proof that these attitudes are persisting: one of his most embarrassing recent gaffes - a smart-arse backhander about the futility of teaching primary students to write software code - reflects just how utterly clueless he is about the way to train tomorrow's innovators.

Software development, after all, is not an occupational skill to be taught like woodworking or boiler making. It is a way of thinking - an intellectual outlet that appeals to and fosters those whose natural curiosity drives them to find out how things work, and how they can be made better.

Anyone who learned Logo or Pascal in school in the 1980s well knows the quiet thrill of writing a series of instructions that solve a particular problem; knows the gnawing desire to improve that code, or expand it to do other things, driven by nothing more than their own curiosity and the desire to ask "what if...?"

Indeed, each of the STEM disciplines represents a way of answering questions that are woefully under-represented in modern teaching - focused, as it is, on softer touchy-feely subjects that pander to the lowest denominator and leave otherwise-capable students bored and disengaged.

Science asks the "why?" about the world around us while technology answers the "how?". Engineering helps us decide "where?" and mathematics tells us the "what?".

Yet today's educational system is so focused on the "who" - with academic agendas and endless curriculum reviews driven by political personality cults - that a larger sense of context has been lost. Critics of greater STEM education argue for the need to foster creativity rather than rote learning, without appreciating that STEM subjects are inherently also about creativity and problem solving, but focus on giving students the tools necessary to actually turn those characteristics into tangible and rewarding action. STEM subjects have been systemically devalued by Australia's academic curriculum, and no amount of parliamentary chest-beating is going to change that overnight.

Labor Leader Bill Shorten has copped both criticism and support for Labor's FutureSmart policy, which he announced in May as a promise to right the academic misgivings of the past three decades. The party's policy will, admirably, not only involve promotion of coding at an early age, but promote better education of teachers and make a financial play for university students to pursue STEM-related courses.

Abbott's technophobic government, which prefers to see Australia's economy as a continent full of sweatshops and its workforce as the proverbial trained monkeys, will need to counter this argument during next year's election. This would normally be done by pointing to progress made in improving STEM education during what will then be three years in government; however, with little to show for itself in this area the Liberal agenda will more likely consist of dodging questions and attacking Shorten.

In the meantime, our poor STEM education continues to let us down when it comes to the STEM skills that will be critical through the rest of the information century and beyond. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report, for example, painted a stark picture of our deficiencies: although our education system was ranked 19th overall, we ranked 38th worldwide in terms of the quality of math and science education, and 30th in terms of the extent of staff training.

Although our scientific research institutions ranked 9th in the world, our capacity for innovation came in 27th, as did the availability of scientists and engineers. Clearly, the education system has failed to capture the promise of the information age - and no matter what our next prime minister does to fix it, we are already so far down the rabbit hole that any change will be a long time coming.

Even if we started training all current prep students in programming, it would be 15 years before those students graduated university and were ready to turn their newly-innovative brains to the task of improving our country and the world.

Hence, the harsh reality: decades of policy neglect, fuelled by an educational culture that not only excuses but implicitly encourages poor STEM learning, have left us dead in the water. We have missed the opportunity to be leaders in STEM subjects, and as a result the areas that need their graduates - engineering, software development, healthcare, scientific research, business systems, cybersecurity defences and more - will all become increasingly dependent on importing skills, or simply subsisting without them.

Meanwhile, our Asian neighbours are fully-in when it comes to STEM: an ascendancy of STEM-focused universities in world rankings was reported years ago, with more than 40 per cent of Asian university graduates pursuing degrees in STEM-related subjects.

The coming workforce dominance of those graduates - and the struggles that we will have as a country to kickstart STEM education that should have been embedded into our teaching and learning decades ago - will define Australia's struggle to remain globally relevant throughout this century. But as long as no less than our own Prime Minister continues to fall back on sarcasm to excuse his own ignorance on the subject, real progress will be difficult.

It is perhaps worth reiterating the words of US president Barack Obama, an unrepentant education advocate, who earlier this year spelled out the realities of STEM education beautifully and highlighted the real cultural shift that we need to make to produce students who are not just trained, but educated to think, to question, to imagine, and then to innovate.

Science "is more than a school subject," he said, "or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world."

David Braue is a technology journalist. Follow him on Twitter @zyzzyvamedia.