The idea of STEM has been used in the education system and many schools for quite a while and changing it now to STEAM is not necessary. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math. Yo-Yo Ma states in his essay that it is important to encourage the use of art in a STEM environment because of its positive effects on the mind. He claims “The values behind art integration – collaboration, flexible thinking, and disciplined imagination – leads to the capacity to innovate”. Although art evokes these skills, the integration of both may not be successful. STEM is all science and math based. Having art added to this may overpower the rest. He argues the importance of art in STEM but it isn’t all about art. In order to be successful you need to take classes in that topic or idea so understand. To better understand science or math you take classes based specifically off of both but adding an art class simply will not do much considering art is a different concept to grasp and does not directly relate.
