A major purpose of this book is to support the STREAM Education Program for Children in Guizhou Province. This is the initiative of Yu, who wants to give back to her former student Mr. Zhongping Yang and his home province. All proceeds from the sale of this book will be put toward education in rural China, especially in the form of this STREAM Education Program for the children of Guizhou Province. Mr. Yang, who is from a rural village in Guizhou Province, supported research by Harvard Graduate School of Education’s China Lab in 2015, by Professor Robert Selman and Professor Helen Haste, on how to reduce the pressure on Chinese high school and middle school students.
The meaning of STREAM: The common acronym STEM refers to science, technology, engineering, and math. With the addition of the arts, it becomes STEAM. Lengthening the acronym to STREAM with the addition of R, representing reading, writing, and relevance, reflects our belief that learning how to read and write about personally and socially relevant issues is the “right” way to change oneself and to change the world. We will also expand the connotation of S to include sports. China is striving to “build an education system to promote the all-around development of moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education, and form a higher-level talent training system”. Former President of Harvard University Derek Bok argued that sports can not only help students acquire higher standards of ethical behavior and personal responsibility, but can also improve interpersonal skills. According to the Media Education Foundation (MEF, founded in 1991 by Professor Sut Jhally), “media is pervasive and invasive”, so it is imperative to teach students “to interpret, evaluate, and think critically about media systems and the content they produce”.1 We hope that the integration of “sports, ‘triple R’, and media” into STREAM will further contribute to the cultivation of the whole person and the betterment of the entire world.
Note
“What is Media Education?” Media Education Foundation. https://www.mediaed.org/what-is-media-education/