English Language Resources Online - series on leadership, power, politics, part 6

English Language Resources Online - series on leadership, power, politics, part 6

Virtue and Leadership are both very interesting and powerful concepts and many essays can be written on these two topics. Due to special requests, I will be placing a term paper here that I have written for a course on Virtue and Leadership.

This was a term paper written for Virtue and Leadership, a USP course at the National University of Singapore, and it is here for reference. As usual, I will be breaking the long term paper up into the smaller constituent parts, like the introduction to the essay, the body of the essay, as well as the conclusion and the recommendations to the essay and the citations at the end of the essay. This is to encourage learning rather than regurgitation and copying.

Essay title:
Are leaders born or educated? Suggest a leadership education for Singapore.

Introduction

The central theme of this discussion is basically the perennial nature versus nurture debate. In the context of leadership we shall be exploring whether leadership is born or educated, or in other words, whether nature or nurture is more important as the determining factor for leadership. The paper seeks to address the question: are leaders born or educated? On the one hand, nature provides the basis for nurture to work on, as nurture would not work without nature, for instance in the trivial case of a cripple who aspires to be a military leader or a mute who aspires to be an oratorical speaker. Yet, nature is unable to result in leadership intrinsically by herself, and it would seem that a person needs training in order to become a leader, and leadership – in various forms, such as military and political leadership, and in various contexts, in democratic and authoritarian societies – has to be learnt. Therefore, the central thesis of this paper is: both nature and nurture are required for leadership; leaders are born and educated. Natural qualities and background foundations are provided by nature, and through education, nature is refined and enhanced and leadership is formed. At the same time, a concomitant idea or a parallel thesis is the idea that nature and nurture are both very closely intertwined and the interrelationship between these two leads to leadership; there is perhaps a false distinction or a false dichotomy between nature and nurture, because the two mutually influence each other. There are many possibilities for a leadership education in Singapore, and later in the course of the paper I will suggest a leadership education, comprising military affairs and national defence, international relations and diplomacy, political leadership, and beyond academics, the development of character.


As usual, the learning point is of course to ask questions - here are some questions that you could ask: what is the strength of this introduction? How would you answer this essay question? How can you take this introduction to improve your English essay writing skills? What can you learn and what can you take away from this instructive piece of good writing? What can you expect to see in the body of the essay? More essays and other essay materials to come on my site! Thanks and cheers.

English Language Resources Online - online essay materials, sample English essay site, essay techniques and essay skills site, and English language resources for all sorts of topics and all sorts of levels from O levels, to A levels, to university level English for all sorts of English language learners