Decline In Empathy And A Rise In Narcission

Since body and mind are connected, ignoring the importance of one will harm the other. The modern education system overlooks the concept of body-mind unity. In order to prepare their students for tomorrow’s world, the schools focus on developing students’ mind by raising the required school work and standardized tests, while ignoring the benefits of body development such as play and exercising. Both Dr. Gray and Scott Carson have pointed out this fact in their articles.
In the play deficit, the author believes that “The decline in opportunity to play has been accompanied by a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism (Gray).” The increase of school works undermine the development of personalities. At the same time, there has been an increase

in mental illnesses in children. Students under more pressure to study and less time to play have less freedom to play. However, playing is a physical experience that leads to development of the body. When schools fails to recognize the connection between body and mind, the deprive students their time to play, which is detrimental to their physical health, which affect the development of their minds.
Scott Carson has also pointed out how physical education trains the mind and teaches values that cannot learned in classrooms. He suggests that: “Aerobic activity might help oxygenate the brain through increased blood flow, stimulating the growth of new brain cells or helping to maintain neuroplasticity”, which is essential for the memory process (Carson). People who exercise their body regularly have better working memories to certain task, longer attention spans and shaper mind for processing information. Physical education enhance the mind through giving students a healthier body, but many colleges have overlooked this fact. Administrators of schools “shift more resources and emphasis to science, math, and other academic subjects” because “physical-education departments might be politically weaker than other departments on campus. (Carson)”
Both articles have pointed out that when the education system ignores the body-mind connection and only focus on the mind, it sabotages the students’ developments in two distinctive ways. First, students failed to possess certain qualities that can be development through playing and exercising, such as creativity, responsibility and collaboration. Second, lack of physical health leads to mental disorder such as depression and anxiety. Body and mind are connected, so our education system emphasize on nurturing both of them, not just one without the other.