There are two conflicting needs in nursery life. First, there is the need to encourage the children you work with to be pleasant, sociable and co-operative, because that creates a caring environment. Second, however, there is the need to prepare them for coping with the many competitive challenges that lie ahead in all areas of their lives.
Reconciling these two demands in the nursery can be difficult. The problem is that competition and co-operation don't always fit well together. With competition, there is only one winner, leaving everyone else a loser; only one child can be the best, and all the others trail behind her. With co-operation, everyone is a winner and there are no losers; all the children work together to achieve a common goal and succeed as a group.
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