EAD II

Project #3 Text #1
Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy and Education -Yo Yo Ma

Assignment Directions:

Download this document. Read the passage below from Yo-Yo Ma, "Necessary Edges: Arts,
Empathy, and Education," carefully underlining or highlighting any words or phrases that feel
significant. Review your annotations and markings thoughtfully. Then respond to the questions
below. Submit your MS-WORD document to the Yo Yo Ma Close Reading Assignment by
Friday March 26th 11:59pm DST.

FROM STEM TO STEAM

Because the world economy is so hyper-competitive, much of the focus in education these days
from Singapore to Shanghai to American schools is on STEM — science, technology,
engineering and math. As important as that is, it is short-sighted. We need to add the empathetic
reasoning of the arts to the mix — STEAM.

The values behind arts integration — collaboration, flexible thinking and disciplined imagination
— lead to the capacity to innovate. A pianist skilled to both read and improvise music is open to
listening to what is around him but knows that, to reach excellence, he needs to filter the
imagination through the discipline of knowledge. When he performs, you will know instantly if
he has achieved that right balance and it works or not.

For me the most proficient way to teach the values of collaboration, flexibility, imagination and
innovation — all skill sets needed in today’s world — is through the performing arts. If you have
these tools, you can do well in any field from software engineering to the biosciences.

Empathy is the other key tool. Empathy and imagination, the artificial layering of different
realities, are linked. Empathy is your capacity to imagine what someone else is going through;
what they are thinking, feeling and perceiving. That will not only give you an outlook on who
they are — continually corrected by evidence — but also what your alternative possibilities are.

Empathetic thinking is something that is severely missing in education today that is only STEM
oriented. Everyone wants innovation, recovering that inspired and innovative spirit of JFK
talking about going to the moon. But you can’t skim the top without the rest of it.

The arts teach us that there is something that connects us all and is bigger than each of us. In
both places it is a matter of equilibrium, of centering the ego at the right point of balance
between the individual and the community.
We are all addressing the same issues with different names attached to them.

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STEAM will help us get there by resolving the education problem. Kids will then go to school
because it is a passion and a privilege, not a requirement.

Questions. Answer fully to the best of your ability.

1. Note any unclear words or phrases and circle for review.

Arts integration: arts education, an approach to teaching that integrates the fine and
performing arts as primary pathways to learning.

Empathetic: the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from
within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position.
Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of emotional states.

Severely: to an undesirably great or intense degree.

2. In your own words, What is STEM? And STEAM? Why does Ma propose STEAM?
STEM is an approach to teaching that mixed with science, technology, engineering and
math. And STEAM is on the basis of the original mix of art teaching methods. The
reason why Ma propose the STEAM, I guess is in order to emphasize the importance of
arts education.

3. What is collaboration? What other “tools” does Ma mention?

How might they help us “do well in any field”?
Collaboration is a combination of the external and internal abilities of an individual.
Collaboration is the ability to balance each of his or her skills and to bring them to life.
The other tools is flexible thinking and disciplined imagination empathetic. Because
when a person is able to balance all the abilities, not too weak in any area and not too
focused on any one skill, he will do well in everything.

4. In your own words, why is empathy so important according to Ma?

I believe that empathetic is more like ability of empathy, and interchanging, which is
standing on the opposite to thinking. If we can perceive the listener's thoughts at any time
when we do things, and consider problems based on the listener's position, then the result
obtained through choice is more likely to be inclined to a win-win situation.