Outlines: Attitudes towards winning and success
Question 2 in your exam set requires you to focus on the attitudes towards winning and success in the three texts. In what follows, we will look at each text at a time and outline the relevant attitudes to the issue.
“Our Unhealthy Obsession with Winning”
Text 1 is an opinion article, written by Tony Schwartz, and published in 2012 on the website of Harvard Business Review.
Beginning with the title, it becomes quite clear that the author has a critical attitude on how people view winning and success. Note that the author is not necessarily critical of winning and success, but of the way people obsess over it and of the way they define it.
First of all, the author admits he appreciates the efforts and training of those focused on winning, such as Olympic contestants, but he is against an over focus on winning, arguing it is a limited perspective: “….our shared reverence for “winners” – that leaves me feeling deeply uneasy.” (ll. 6-8); “I just want to suggest the limitations of a “winner take all” mentality, not just in the Olympics but in our culture as a whole.” (ll. 14-17)
However, he is also against people valuing children just for “showing up” (l. 14) at competitions.
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“How Adults Are Stealing Ambition From Kids”
Text 2 is an article written by Tim Elmore and published on Growing Leaders website in 2013.
In the article, the author conveys a critical attitude towards parents and schools who do not encourage competition and are more concerned with participation than winning and success. Consequently, we can say that Tim Elmore has an attitude pro winning and success as he believes competition makes children more ambitious and will help them in life.
The article begins with the author using an anecdote (personal story) to criticize the fact that society tends to only encourage participation when it comes to children: “We are raising a generation of kids who are used to receiving recognition for participating.” (ll. 21-22)
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“My daughter, my beautiful failure”
Text 3 represents a blog post written by Lucy Clarke and published on The Guardian website in 2014.
The author of the post argues, like in text 1, in favor of reframing what we define winning and success.
Clarke uses the personal example of her daughter, who struggled through high school with classes and grades, but who eventually managed to graduate and take her exams. The author’s main argument is that winning and success should not be assessed according to general standards (such as being 1st in class) but according to personal standards. In other words, something that may be a failure for some may be a success for others.
The author is also critical of traditional attitudes to winning and success, as she presents how her daughter was deemed a failure by society’s standards:
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