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.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree

Collaboration is the most important element of success that is often overlooked. The prompt suggests that it is important to instill a sense of coopertation and not competition in them, if we aspire to prepare them to be global leaders in various fields. I would mostly agree with the recommedation because, in my opinion, cooperation and competition have to go hand in hand for a greater collective success. I would like to state my case based on the following three reasons,

A world with just competition and no collaboration would never be conducive to the advancement of consciousness or leadership. It would likely pave way for a dystopian, success-mongering classes instead of a collective success of humanity. For example, consider the origin of the United Nations. The motive of such a global and cooperative organisation is to instil the sense of growth through collaborative projects and discussions. If each country would just be willing to crush the others in a competitive environment, there would have been more World Wars and Cold Wars. Such a situation would be detrimental to both the countries. Contrarily, as a part of the global collaboration, the leaders of India and Russia have been able to help each other in perilous times by sharing military, technology and diplomats. Hence, to build a peaceful and eventful future, it is necessary for young leader to be as cooperative with the others as possible.

An isolated mind would often have a blinkered outlook and may sometimes be against changes in the environment. It is necessary for 'leaders' to understand the complete spectrum of possibilities and only then would they be able to make pragmatic decisions leading to a collective success. For example, consider post-colonial era of India, a huge sub-continent that was fragmented into plethora of kingdoms, each trying their best to win over the other. It was at such a time that the imperial Britishers have, bytaking advantage of the unstability caused by internal quarrels, gained control over the subcontinent. Imagine a scenario where, despite the tyrannical rule of the British, the kindgoms continue to fight against each other in a competitive spirit. If such a thing were to occur, India would never have gained independence. The most important thing that was required then was a cooperative nature towards a common goal. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi have adopted that cooperativeness and hence, were able to drive a nation wide movement to expel the Britishers. So, the sense of cooperation for a common goal is of utmost importance for the leaders.

Perhaps, the only thing that I would disagree in the prompt is that it recommends that young people should not have a sense of competition. There will not be progress on technological and social fronts if there is no competition. For example, it is only because USA and Russia have strived to outweigh the other during the Cold War that we have ground-breaking techologies like the Internet, Nuclear power plants and Biotechnology. The same reasoning works in the case of Industrial Revolution when Western countries have participated on a competitive global stage and this has led toa significant increase in the capabilities of humans. Thus, for anyone to excel in a certain field, a competitive sense would provide the push to always strive for greatness.

In conclusion, the global cooperative outlook of leaders of tomorrow is imperative. But that should not come at the cost of healthy competition. Cooperation and competition should bolster each other in our strive towards a greater tomorrow.