Argumentative Essay on the Importance of Physical Education in Schools

Argumentative Essay As America attempts to better it’s elementary education system, they progressively eliminate the amount of time spent for physical education. They believe that this approach is necessary to vacate time in the day for more possible time in the classroom learning core subjects; such as math, English, reading, etc. This may seem like a productive way to better educate their pupils, but in fact they could be limiting their potential learning capacity by restricting their daily physical education. In children, daily physical activity leads to more productive brains. Elementary schools need to increase their requirements for physical education, because younger brains are more vulnerable to the positive effects of exercise on the brain which will lead to a stronger memory and better learning capabilities. The brain is a very complex organ in the body, like every activity done throughout your day it is effecting your brain in some way. Exercise does no different. Exercise greatly has an impact on the processes occurring in the hippocampus region. As explained by Mary Carmichael in the newspaper article “Stronger, Faster, Smarter”, The process starts in the muscles. Every time a bicep or quad contracts and releases, it sends out chemicals, including a protein called IGF-1 that travels through the bloodstream, across the blood-brain barrier and into the brain itself. There, IGF-1 takes on the role of supervisor in the body's neurotransmitter factory. It issues orders to ramp up production of several chemicals, including one called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF (Carmichael). The neurotransmitters, which are any substance responsible for sending nerve signals across a synapse between two neurons, in the body are serotonin and dopamine. With neurotransmission the neurons that are carrying the serotonin and endorphins must connect to a receptor in the brain and transport these chemicals to the brain. Serotonin is a chemical linked

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