1) What is the surrounding context for this essay? Where and when was it first published? Who wrote the essay, and what do you notice about the author’s bio?
This essay was published on an online news/blog cite called World-Post which is a combination of Huffington Post and Berggruen Institute of Governance. This site launched in January of 2014 was written by a known songwriter and cellist by the name of Yo-Yo Ma. I noticed in the authors bio that it showed all of his achievements such as beginning to preform at the age of five and winning many important metals like the National Metal of Arts (2001) and Presidential Metal of Freedom (2010). Although these are only a few examples I think the bio helped me realize because of these achievements, it has shaped him for how he is today.
2) What is the imposed context? What circumstances surround your personal reading experience? What is your purpose for reading this text?
This text along with the others we have read is very important when it comes to art. This essay really has some great ideas and points about arts influence in the world. I did not know about Yo-Yo Ma before reading this so I learned a lot. I found it very interesting and quite amazing when reading his achievements. Although this text was given to us, my purpose for reading it was for a homework assignment in which we were asked to annotate and answer questions.
3) Describe the intentional context. What is the rhetorical situation? What is the scope? What is the “so what?”
The rhetorical situation in this essay is that Yo-Yo Ma believes in arts ability to help children develop skills like expressing opinion, empathy, etc. He thinks this be done by teaching children in school more than just STEM and branching off into learning more about art.
choose three unfamiliar words or references to look up. Define or explain these terms in your blog and how Ma uses them in his argument.
1)hyper-competitive: a very strong competition between companies, markets that are changing very quickly.
2)bandwidth: the energy or mental capacity required to deal with a situation.
3)empathetic thinking: Having, thinking, feeling emotions and or senses the emotions of others.
