Band 6+: "Many students are taught to push themselves to try and be better than other students, rather than work together for everyone's benefits. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?" "Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience."

In contemporary discourse, people are debating about whether it is beneficial to cultivate their competitive sense at the cost that they may compete against each other in many aspects. Although some advocate that it would be better if we highlight cooperation more than competition. I am firmly convinced that competition should have priority over cooperation in teaching students, a stance which will be elaborated upon in the subsequent analysis.

There are many reasons explain why cooperation is more important. The primary contributor for this viewpoint is that people are social animals, thereby we can be more powerful when working together. For example, troops always ask soldiers to move as a collective so that they can perform complex tactics and effective much more effectively than an individual soldier can. Furthermore, proponents for this standpoint claim that by cultivating the cooperative sense of students, it will be easier for us to develop their other moralities later in their life. To prove, many moralities are essentially actions benefiting others, which in turn means that they are built on the spirit of cooperation, such as being humble means a person work with others by respecting their opinions.

Conversely, I contend that we should highlight competition first before we largely advocate cooperation. The foremost reason underpinning my position is that only when we have the true working capacity that we can cope with others meaningfully when we are working. And competition is the golden key to the vital working capacity. To illustrate, an office filled with people who have never been practiced in a competitive environment can never create true value. In addition, many schools in China today are trying to raise the awareness of competition with the aim to stimulate the personal commitment of students to be better, which further consolidates my viewpoint.

In summation, while acknowledging the merits of realizing the importance of cooperation in education, I am steadfast in my belief that children should pay more attention to competing as well given their potential development and ability to do effective team work in the future.