Competition Persuasive Essay

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What to Compete For Is life a race? Modern society is filled with competition, from a twenty-year-old’s job application to a four-year-old’s Little League baseball game; the question is whether or not children should be exposed to it. The answer isn’t as simple as a yes or no—it is more of an approach to competition rather than a question of competition’s existence. Competition is an integral part of a childhood; it prepares children for the future while pushing them further in the path that they choose. People mistake winning and losing as demeaning titles that serve no purpose other than to make children feel worse about themselves. Children and adults alike are falsely lead to believe that competition hurts. At a surface level, perhaps

The answer is an introduction to positive and safe competition. If people begin to be exposed to competition at a young age, they will be prepared for the future when they will have to face competition with tangible consequences. Today, overprotective parents are “limiting the competition for children” (Pandel). Everyone is awarded a medal or prize for just trying. Everyone wins. And all in the hope that these children will feel better about themselves. What they neglect to acknowledge is that in doing this, they devalue awards. What they neglect to acknowledge is that this is not how the real world operates. Companies don’t give out participation awards when they reject applications. Bosses don’t say, “It’s okay that you didn’t do your job, you tried.” The world is harsh, and parents are trying to hide their children in little bubbles that say otherwise. What parents are doing is setting up a “culture of mediocrity” (Pandel) that screams, “It’s okay to not do your best; you’ll be rewarded for even trying!” Everyone can try, but not everyone can succeed. Children need to learn their strengths and weaknesses so that they can develop their individual skills instead of being lead to believe

It is about the mindset children have going into competition rather than the outcome. Some say that in competition, no one besides the winner can find success, and no one besides the winner can feel good. An illustration for “Everything’s a Competition in America” from Ramen Noodle Nation Blog depicts one person pointing upward on a pile of struggling people, none of which look happy. What the image doesn’t show is the success that some of the “losers” find. For some of the so-called “losers,” that loss is the best they’ve ever been, and that’s something to celebrate because for them, “‘. . . [t]he goal is actually improving upon [themselves]’” (Turner). Others say that “[s]uccess comes to be defined as victory,” which causes losers to have low self-esteems and winners to depend on winning to have high self-esteems. This is, admittedly, true—a sentiment shared by many. It is a problem in society that people are trying to solve. What isn’t true is that removing competition is the solution to this problem. Just like when someone cuts his arm, he doesn’t chop it off, people can’t just remove competition. Instead, people should try to change what competition means. People need to begin thinking