Whatever happened to English and Social Studies??

Last night, as I'm sure almost everyone knows, President Obama delivered the annual State of the Union Address. To read the full text of the speech, Click Here.
Throughout the speech, Obama constantly discussed the current issue of education. According to the speech, America has fallen to "ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree", and the President feels that America must do better than that. I completely agree with what he is saying, the quality of education is a major issue in the country, and it is something that needs to change.
Obama also stressed the importance of teachers, but most notably he talked about teachers of math and science. He stated "we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science and technology and engineering and math. (Applause.)" The question that instantly popped into my mind after he said this was "What about English, or Social Studies, or arts? Why are math and science suddenly the most important subjects?"
I'm personally not a fan of either of the two, so maybe I'm biased, but it seems to me that other subjects taught in school are equally as important. Perhaps many people feel that students taught in the subjects of math and science will somehow be more beneficial to society, that they will be quicker to stop global warming, or save the world. I don't think this is the case, I think students taught in other subjects have just as great of a chance to be beneficial to society, which makes me wonder why the President chose to only reference those two subjects.