Firstly, one must understand the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is simply feeling sorry for one another. We can pick up these feelings from someone else's body language. This is achieved from the mirror neurons in our brain being activated when we observe someone in obvious distress e.g when someone is screaming in pain. Empathy is about reflecting more internally about someone else's situation (where the signs of distress are not as obvious e.g when a child does not have a partner to pair up with during a P.E activity) by imagining how you would feel in that situation and therefore understanding that person more e.g you imagine that they would have felt left out and awkward and so you invite them to join your group to make three people. The key here is that for empathy, one must use their imagination. This is a skill, and not something we do often and naturally. Putting in the effort to use the skill of empathy helps us as a society by not making brash judgments about others and labeling them as a loser or weird.

Most people only start to empathise with others in a certain situation if they have been through a very similar situation themselves. They do this by accessing their memories to remember what emotions they went through. If people were to use their imagination, they can predict what kind of emotions someone is going through even if they have not been in that situation before. If children at a young age were taught to use their imagination in this way and given common examples of when someone feels isolated, I believe a difference can be made in the attitude of that child towards their peers.

Loneliness, isolation and depression is affecting someone you know. 1 in 10 children are suffering with a mental health problem as a study by Centre Forum Mental Health Commission shows. 3 in 4 people after the age of 18 have a mental health problem. Most of us can understand how hard this can be to deal with. Despite this, most people do not seem to empathise with others going through this hardship.

Hateful opinions and beliefs in our culture are particularly influential on us when we are young children and changing one's negative beliefs is harder than preventing them in the first place. I believe that more effort is needed to prevent children from feeling isolated and from isolating others.

Children are being ignored or treated badly by their peers for being large, skinny, a different colour of skin and other physical attributes. I am not talking about the obvious bullying, as bad as that is. I am talking about the subtlety of one child not seeing another as a human being, like them. I believe that children will also come to conclusions themselves and decide that they should isolate themselves from others for their own protection. Empathy can be taught both ways to help children like this, see past their own delusions.

If children were taught how to see through the eyes of another at a young age, there is a strong possibility that many lives will be happier in the future. I think throughout later years more complex areas should also be taught e.g emotional control, identity studies, body language and communication to further cement equality within society.

I believe that teaching children to empathise with one another is the future for schools, should be implemented in all schools across the UK and research should be funded in this area in order to teach it efficiently. The benefits of this are potentially: less crime, less bullying, less depression, better grades, more collaboration among the future generation and a happier society in general.

An unhappy life, for many, is not worth living. We will never achieve a perfect society but it should be our goal to strive for it. Thank you for your support.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/19/english-children-among-unhappiest-world-widespread-bullying