Essay topics: "The best way for a society to prepare its young people for leadership in government, industry, or other fields is by instilling in them a sense of cooperation, not competition."
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Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

Answer:
Man is a social animal. It has been scientifically proven, our evolution from hunter gatherers to settlers, to the civilized society we form today, over the period of time, depended on fundamental cooperation sought from the people in the society. The barter trade made evolution possible and ensured the dominance of human species over all other creatures. All of this surely would not have been possible had man just resorted to competing amongst himself. Therfore, I believe that it is certainly necessary for a society to prepare its young for leadership in government, industry or other fields by instilling a sense of cooperation and not competition.

In my opinon, instilling a sense of competition makes young people selfish, only focussed on one's own success, sometimes it can even occur at the cost of other peoples success. Today's education system encourages young people to be individualistic, focussed only on one's own gain, and in that rat race, we even find some students getting so pressured that they resort to underhanded means such as cheating or not sharing information amongst each other such as class notes, etc. in order to go ahead. This individualistic attitude is not just restricted to academics but also applicable to industries and corporations. In the mid eighties, it was observed that some banks practiced redlining. It was a term invented to mark a phenomenon where lending institutions lent capital only to wealthy and affluent neighborhoods and discouraged lending capital to economically backward members of the society. This resulted not only in certain sectors of society being favoured over others in terms of home ownership, but also resulted in racial discrimination since lenders took discriminatory lending approach towards the african american sectors of the society. Upon retrospection it was observed that in order to make short term gains a good part of society was unfairly left behind since the american dream to own a home was never allowed to them. After effects of redlining can even be seen today with certain neighborhoods left so far behind that they are still unable to catch up financially even today.

Therfore, instilling in our young a sense of collective cooperation will ensure that we move forward together, taking along with us the poor, the weak and the less fortunate. Only in the sucesss of a society lies the success of mankind. A few will argue that we have competitios all around us, be it in sports, such as the Olympic games, or amid industries where the latest version of smart phones from different brands are competing for global domination or be it in our society where different countries are fighting for global supremacy. And if it one needs to make it in such a competitive world, one certainly needs to be more competitive than cooperative. To those, i would say, even in Olympics we have relay games, team sports that depend on team mates to succeed, even in industries we have symbiotic companies the growth of one leading to the growth of all. Take the example of companies spearheaded by Elon Musk, the innovation from Space X feeds into Tesla, its electric car making company, Tesla in turn depends on development in solar panel technology which is another sister firm - Solar City, which is the inventor of solar panels. These firms are so interlinked with each other that practically the success of one leads to the sucess of another. Even amid great nations of the world, we see trade treaties for imports and exports and countries dependance on each other is so much, that only countries with stronger allies are truly strong nations in the world today.

Instilling a sense of cooperation amid the young will surely help them succeed in future. Since the young are tomorrow's future of a nation. Senseless competition will only lead to selfish individualistic individuals and in turn selfish nations. Since time immemorial we have known the success of mankind lies in cooperation and not in competition.