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Empathy and Why it is Important in Education Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in someone else’s position and to intuit what that person is feeling (Pink, 2006). Rather than simply sympathizing, empathy enables us to put ourselves into the shoes of another and actually feel what they are feeling. This vicarious sense allows us to better understand people and their experiences. Understanding others and their experiences is vital in education. Whether dealing with different races, religions, sexes, etc., empathy provides us with an avenue to widespread understanding of others that even language cannot. In a study conducted by Dr. Nicolas Danziger from the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology and Pain Center at the Pitie-Salpetriere in Paris, France on patients with congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), it was discovered that CIP patients were able to empathize with those feeling pain when emotional cues were present. Dr. Danziger and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain for this study which displayed their “findings underline the major role of midline structures in emotional perspective taking and in the ability to understand someone else's feelings despite the lack of any previous personal experience of it” (Cell Press, 2009). Empathy is intrinsically intertwined with emotions and allows use to “feel” things we’ve never actually experienced. Legendary psychologist Paul Ekman demonstrated in a study in 1965 how facial expressions are universal and that universality permits all people to connect with the emotions felt by the person being presented in the pictures. In Ekman’s study, he used a chart with facials expressions and showed them to subjects from America, Japa... ... middle of paper ... ...t of the project even helps those who did not read the book to try and connect with a character (and hopeful peak enough interest to make them read). Empathy is a proficiency that is essential for success in the Conceptual Age. If we want to be able to work and live together in today’s world, we must do all that we can to understand those around us. This video project is a great tool for promoting empathy as well as giving students a more meaningful academic encounter. It causes students to think about others with an entirely different approach from what they are used to. This project drives students to care about the people in the stories that they are reading because they put themselves in their shoes. They experience what they experience, love what they love, fear what they fear, and overall feel what they feel. What could be more meaningful than that?