Nowadays, education not only is more and more popularized but also continuously change in order to be suitable to types of people, especially to children. According to many people, competitiveness should be boosted among children, while other consider teaching about cooperation as the best way to educate. Personally, I think cooperation is more important.
It is no doubt that benefits what competitiveness brings are very worthy. One of the biggest advantages is motivation stimulation. Being divided in a group in which there are peers who are at the same qualification as us, we always have desire to come over our own limit and other people. This is the main motivating source for you to develop yourself and discover your own ability or aspect you fascinate as well. Furthermore, your development and achievement also create healthy competition, thus become a role model and motivation for other people to make afford and reach to their full potentials.
However, in some age, competitiveness does not seem to be effective, even has bad affects. As we know, competitiveness reflects effort of individual and does not involve teambuilding. It can only has positive impact to students who are not a child and full of determination. Therefore, it is a big disadvantage for children to be competitive at the early age that can make them to be selfless and deprived from community. In early age, children will have much more benefits if they are thought about cooperation that gives them awareness of team spirit. It is the main stage for children to help each other to develop, thus promote the whole group which is opposite with that extremely high competitiveness can make some students to suffer from embarrassment and be removed. Furthermore, this teaching way also helps students to promote their own talent more effectively because there are many supports from other peers and teacher which are beside own afford.
In brief, I strongly believe that teaching about team spirit and teambuilding is the essential method indeed for children in small age. However, it does not mean that competitiveness is nonsense. What is important is how we combine them effectively in order to take most good points from them.