Competitive educational system or cooperative one?

[Hanoi]

Good evening, Prof. Kitos!
Please help me check this GMAT issue essay. Thank you very much in advance!
Hanoi.

“If a nation is to ensure its own economic success, it must maintain a highly competitive educational system in which students compete among themselves and against students from other countries.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your position with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Essay:

There have been many debates regarding the advantages of competitive and cooperative educational system in a country. Some people argue that only by using competitive educational system, in which students compete among themselves and against students from other countries, a nation could ensure its economic success. I do not think it is a good idea to design an educational system that focuses mainly on competition, since, although a little competition might produce desired results, in the long run, too much competition will be destructive. Instead, I believe that our national economic success will be better promoted by an educational system that encourages cooperative learning among students in our country in particular, as well as, students from other countries across the globe in general.

Granted, competitiveness is an important aspect of human nature, and, if properly directed, it can motivate us to reach higher and produce more, not to mention meet deadlines. However, being competitive fixes our focus externally on marking and beating the progress of others with whom we compete. Such external motivation can direct our attention away from creative solutions to our problems, and away from important human values, like cooperation and fair play. Indeed, a highly competitive environment can foster cheating and ruthless back-stabbing within an organization, and ill-will and mistrust among nations. Particularly, in the extreme case, competitive between nations becomes war.

On the other hand, an environment of cooperation encourages us to discover our common goals and the best way to achieve them. At the national and international levels, our main interests are in economic well-being and peace. In fact, economic success means little without the security of peace. Thus, global peace becomes a powerful incentive for developing educational models of cooperative learning, and implementing exchange programs and shared research projects among universities from different countries.

Moreover, research suggests that cooperative settings foster a greater creativity and productivity than competitive ones. This has been shown to be the case both in institutions of higher learning and in business organizations. If true, it seems reasonable to argue that national economic success would be similarly tied to cooperative rather than competitive effort.

In conclusion, competition can provide an effective stimulus to achievement and reward. Even so, I believe that it would be unwise to make competition the centerpiece of our educational system. We stand to reap greater benefits, including economic ones, by encouraging cooperative learning.


TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture by a professor of Physics

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