Governments should spend more money in support of the arts than in support of athletics such as state-sponsored Olympic teams. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

I disagree with the statement that governments should spend more resources on arts rather than athletics, especially state-sponsored Olympic teams.

Sports is the best way for a country to show themselves to the world. The 2008 Beijing Olympics slogan was “higher, faster, stronger”. Every country wants to be like that, but the reality is that for most developing countries, sports is the best way, or even the only way, for them to prove their ability. People can be motivated by competing, winning, and the glory of their own country. Sports combine all of them, so it is a good idea for the government to put their resources in supporting athletics primarily. “Why do you Chinese care so much about the result of a volleyball game?” “Because our mind is not strong enough. One day when we are confident enough, we won’t need to view results as the only value of sports.” These are lines in the movie “Leap” which is about the history of the Chinese national volleyball team. Decades ago, China was going through a tough period of time when the country just came out of a hundred years of turbulence and people saw a huge distance between China and other developed countries. At that time, a win in an international sports field could provide huge motivation to people all over the country. Motivation brings energy, and with that comes development.

Developing sports can make a country’s order more stable. Olympics is the highest international stage of athletics, but if we look at the origin of why it began, we see that it can reduce the will for war and make combat more civilized. For a government, the first mission is to keep its state stable, and sports can aid this goal. Great athletes can influence every person in the country through newspapers, televisions, and the internet. They encourage people to spread their will of competing in a more civilized way and therefore reduce the risk of social unrest.

Sports can improve the overall health of people. Health is the most valuable thing in one’s whole life. Improving sports infrastructure will give citizens a better environment to do exercise. Arts can also improve the “health” of people mentally, but since sports cost much less than arts for citizens to participate, its influence is greater.

All things considered, we can conclude that governments should spend more resources athletics rather than arts.

PS. Professor, thank you very much. In this version, I rearranged the structure a bit I put a concluding sentence at the beginning of every paragraph and add a paragraph at the end for conclusion. How many points can this paragraph get at TOEFL like this?