The well-being of a society is enhanced when many of its people question authority.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and s

It is argued that for many citizens to question authority is beneficial to the general well-being of the society. Indeed, criticizing authority can lead to higher transparency and at the same time practice a very important capacity-critical thinking. However, the frequent questioning of authority will ultimately hamper the efficiency of the governments or any other institutions. The supervision of power and authority should mostly be undertaken by those with professional knowledge and wider range of experiences.

Undoubtedly, it is dangerous to follow anything proposed by the authority without independently thinking about it. Also, an authority without supervision and criticises is likely to abuse power. Government is a good case in point in that without the different voices from the people, the governments can make decisions serving the benefit of other special interests group with the public unknown about it. Likewise, a corporation leader can make imprudent strategy if its authority prevent the team to pose any questions. For individual, it is important to not take for granted what is given by the authority. Critical thinking has become the most important 21 century skill in today’s society, and the essence of critical thinking is that do not ever assume others as wise and objective, but always ask questions about the validity of others’ argument, no matter how authoritative they are. Therefore, from the governmental, corporational, and individual level, questioning authority can bring great benefits.

Questioning authority can be beneficial so far as it has a reasonable base and does not hinder the efficiency of the system. In reality, however, an institution full of criticizes can be stagnated because the unfounded voices obscure what really matters. Take schools as an example, if students are encouraged to always criticizing the policy of teachers or schools, the daily teaching activities will be hampered. Let us imagine that during a class on Calculus, a student keeps raising his hand asking question about why 1 plus 1 equals 2. It is a very good question, despite that it may take a bachelor degree in Math to fully understand it. By keep asking questions like these, the teacher’s lesson plan will be not able to carry along, and other students, without interests to this particular question, will be frustrated because their time has been wasted. School is like a minor society. If too many people devote most of their time in asking trivial questions or questioning about the effectiveness of government regarding tackling social issues that may take years to deal with, the government will be busy answering their questions while spending less time in their works. The communications by themselves are not beneficial to the welfare of the public, especially when it could have been spent on works that really matter. And this is why sometimes, challenging authority can be an obstacle to really solve problems.

My last point is that most of the countries are structured in a way that encourage supervising and challenging authority. For a valid case one needs to look no further than a newspaper or a TV program. Yes, the media is a powerful tool to keep questioning any authority because it has more information and can reach to professionals or scholars that can provide constructive advice. Likewise, the very existence of think tank is for giving third-party advice to the current authority, and every single reports or policy recommendations from them represents a thorough investigation to the subject matters. Therefore, I argue that we should trust those third-party in their role of challenging authorities in any forms.

In sum, it is vital for individuals to have a critical mindset and to not take for granted the ideas given by authorities. Leaders in corporations and government should also be open to competing suggestions for better performance. But the baseline is that the advice are well-grounded and proposed in a regulated manner without actually harming the benefit of others. We should also trust and encourage those with professional knowledge and skills to keep challenging and supervising authorities.