1. The immediate context includes the title, “Necessary Edges: Art, Empathy and Education”, which was written by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. It was published in January 2014 in the World Post. Before Yo-Yo Ma begins his work, there is a short biography about him and the World Post. I noticed that the bio included some of Yo-Yo Ma’s extensive accomplishments and awards, which gave the audience an idea of whose work we wold be reading. It also mentioned his degrees from Harvard and Juilliard, which are both extremely prestigious schools.
2. The imposed context includes my purpose and my personal experiences reading this work. My purpose for reading it was to complete this assignment for class, and to eventually write a paper on it. I had a good experience with this work, and I agree with many of Yo-Yo Ma’s claims. I believe that schools should be teaching more than typical STEM subjects; as a health sciences student, I think broadening my knowledge would help me become a better occupational therapist.
3. The internal context is the “so what?” of the work. In addition to explaining his own opinions and experiences, Yo-Yo Ma describes effects of STEAM on the world. Teaching art will help students gain a more holistic, effective education, and will greatly benefit the world. This writing has a very broad scope; it is targeting teachers and encouraging them to include art in their curriculums. However, Ma also targets students as individuals by explaining how tools like empathy can allow us to have more beneficial interactions.

Some words I wasn’t familiar with:

1. aggregator: a website or program that collects related items of content and displays them or links to them
2. magnate: a wealthy and influential person, especially in business
3. globalism: the operation or planning of economic and foreign policy on a global basis