Imagine you are a 5-year-old child. You go to your friend Johnny’s birthday party and Johnny’s mom asks you what flavor ice cream you want: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, coffee, or mint. “Chocolate,” you say. Chocolate is the only ice cream you’ve ever tasted, but you know that it’s the best flavor. Oh no! Johnny’s mom discovers that the chocolate ice cream is all gone! She gives you vanilla ice cream instead, hoping to compensate for the lack of chocolate. You reluctantly accept the vanilla ice cream even though you’re upset that the chocolate is gone. You pout and you hesitate to eat the ice cream, but your stomach is growling. You finally take a bite and—wow. The vanilla tastes better than anything you’ve tasted before. Even chocolate. You can’t believe what you’ve been missing out on and you begin to wonder what other flavors of ice cream are out there.

What’s my point? Well, education is a key ingredient for making good decisions. Democracy allows us Americans the privilege to vote for our leader. In order for the American public to make decisions on such important matters, we need to be well informed by our public schools. The role of the public school is to teach students to look at things from different perspectives. For the 5-year-old this means looking at ice cream as more than just chocolate. The more informed we are, the better we are at analyzing and making conclusions based on that information. In the ice cream metaphor, the 5-year-old child had previously only tasted chocolate ice cream, and therefore thought that chocolate was the best flavor. However, once he tried another flavor, he realized that he was mistaken. The more ice cream flavors he tries, the more knowledge he will have to make future decisions about what flavor of ice cream to have. The same can be said for education.

So what does the need for knowledge have to do with democracy, exactly? In American democracy we the people have the right to choose our leader. When choosing a leader we must be informed on the candidates’ ideals and propositions. We must look at all of the information—the chocolate, the vanilla, the strawberry, etc.—and make educated conclusions. If we are ignorant, we are likely to make poor decisions on how our country is governed and who our leader is. Just like the 5-year-old who decided that the best ice cream was chocolate just because it was the only ice cream he had known.

To sum up my argument, the American public schools have the responsibility of instilling knowledge into the American youth. With this knowledge, Americans will be able to make proper decisions on their representatives and maintain a successful democracy.