issue194

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Issue194: The best preparation for life or a career is not learning to be competitive, but learning to be cooperative.

Is learning to be cooperative the best preparation for life or a career, as the speaker asserts, but not learning to be competitive? I agree that a sense of cooperation is very important in people's life and workplace, without which many social problems can't be solved. Yet we should never overlook a sense of competition which also serves an important role in the development of society.

With the rapid development of society, science, economy and technology, our life standard has been improved a lot. However, at the same time, many social problems arise, such as energy crisis, the effect of greenhouse, global warming, political conflicts and even wars. Can any country solve these problems alone? No. It is lucky that leaders from different countries have realized the necessity of cooperation, they put huge investment in the research of alternative energy.....

In some fields, possessing a sense of cooperation will make a lot of things easier and more likely to be successful due to more strength and intellect and therefore they contribute more than individual. Consider the basketball game, common sense tells us that a superstar himself/herself can't lead his team to success without extra help, the 2004 NBA final championship game is a striking example. A government would aggregate experts from different fields when it decides to build a dam, whose construction closely relates to other fields, such as the geological factors, the cost and the extinction of animals due to the possibility of disafforest.

On the other hand, we should never overlook the importance of competition, to which some extent drives people to work hard and lead people to cooperate. Today's students study so hard, because they know it is impossible for someone who has a little knowledge to find a good job. It can also be well illustrated in the field of business.
In the environment of stiff competition, companies like Toyota and General Motor the two famous automobile manufactories, in order to reduce their cost and increase profits, cooperates with each other. Because of competition, mobile phone manufactories like Nokia, Samsung, Motorola company continue to create high-tech and beautiful phones to cater to consumers.

In sum, I agree with the speaker that learning a sense of cooperation is important to people's life and career. Without cooperation, there are many problems human being can't deal with effectively. Yet, a sense of competition is also important, it serves as a driven- force to work hard and cooperate. Both of cooperation and competition is worth learning.