Arizona university shows all that is wrong with higher learning

OPINION:

A professor at Arizona State University let her students choose: Take the final exam or go join in a picket protest against President Donald Trump.

So guess what the students chose?

This is what’s wrong with much of America’s places of higher learning these days — they’re not really places of learning, but rather propaganda.

Angeles Maldonado teaches Global Politics of Human Rights. And this is the sorry excuse she gave the Arizona Republic, about why she offered the option: “The class decided that as a group project they wanted to make their voices heard about the issues that are affecting them today, so instead of just reading about the human rights violations, they’d speak out about the current violations that are happening.”

And her duty as a professor, she said, was to support her students.

What? Since when?

Here, let’s break this down into the simplest of terms. A duty of a professor is to teach; a duty of a student is to learn. A professor’s duty is not to stoke snowflake feelings and set the stage for lives of little purpose and direction. 

Protests, political picketing, rallying around a cause, exerting and exhorting one’s personal opinions, fighting against the man, fighting for the woman, dressing in white and donning pink hats — these are all examples of Things To Do On One’s Own Time.

Teach the snowflake generation their feelings take precedence over life, then they’ll leave school thinking the business world operates the same way. And when their bosses don’t let them take the day off — with pay — to protest some political figure they find offensive, well then, that’ll either be a hard wake-up call for them, or a ridiculous lawsuit for the business.

Either way, it’s a waste of America’s time.

These Arizona State University students couldn’t even protest with dignity.

As Breitbart noted: “The students created signs and stood in a line outside ASU’s library to form a human wall. Students from other classes joined the line and picked up more signs to spell out the slogan, ’Wall Against Hate!’”

I’m sorry — but it doesn’t get much stupider than that.

How does holding up a bunch of cardboard and adopting facial expressions of sadness and piety make everybody get along?

The students were protesting anything and everything — from LGBTQ rights, to women’s rights, to Black Lives Matter rights, to illegal immigrant rights, to prisoners’ rights.

And now, thanks to their signs, peace prevails the world over and we can all stand around and sing kumbya in a single language — not.

Professor Maldonado ought to be fired — for impersonating a professor. And parents of college-bound kids? Take note. Spending money on a four-year school might not be the best way to educate. After all, if all they’re going to be learning is how to protest a political candidate or cause, they can do that at home, for free.