This video of a high school student donning a MAGA hat is now going viral. The student refused to follow the teacher's instructions to remove the hat. After speaking to the student, explaining why he couldn't wear the hat, the teacher evacuated the classroom. There are a number of points to be made here, but first let's roll tape:

If I were a betting woman, I'd say a fair amount of conservative news sites will go all in on defending the student's right to free speech. But this isn't a college classroom, a strip mall, or a public sidewalk. This is high school. If this high school has rules about not wearing hats in a classroom, it doesn't matter if the hat reads "Make America Great Again" or "Hogwarts sucks!" If the school states hats are not to be worn in the classroom, the student refusing to take off his hat is in the wrong. Also, kind of a dick.

Secondly, if the school doesn't have rules against wearing hats in classrooms, the student may have been better served by removing his hat when the teacher asked, then taking it up with the teacher or the school staff after class (see also Student Asked to Cover Pro-Trump Shirt is Suing School District). Rather than disrupting the entire class just to make a viral video. Which was also a dick move.

Thirdly, evacuating the class was borderline functionally deranged. What the teacher should've done was tell the student he'd need to see the principal, or whoever is the next line up for discipline, and if the student still refused (which he did), the teacher should've told the student to stay after class to be spoken to by the principal, or the teacher should've called the principal in. What the teacher shouldn't have done was escalate the situation and feed into the student's grandstanding. Which was kind of a dick move.

Noticing a theme?

High school classrooms are not for political grandstanding from either the teacher (High School History Teacher goes on Anti-Trump Political Rant) or the students. If the school has a no hat rule, it would be wrong for a feminist student to refuse to take off her pink pussy hat, just as it's wrong for a student to refuse to take off his MAGA hat. I remember many asshole students (no the teacher shouldn't have called the student an asshole, that was also a dick move) when I was in high school using any excuse to disrupt the class. I didn't like those students then, I don't like them now.

I understand conservatives are targets in high school and college from the liberal faculty. But so do the students know they're targets, and it appears to me, at least in this video, the student wants the attention, wants to make a point, wants to be an ass. I'm sure many people will disagree with me, and that's fine. It's America. Liberal teachers or not, crappy curriculum or not, high school classrooms are not for political grandstanding from teachers nor students. It's one thing to argue a teacher's point about the curriculum or directly rebutting a teacher's assertion, it's another point entirely to try to make a political statement for the sake of making a political statement where political statements do not belong.

NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST? FIX THAT! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH ITUNES HERE AND SOUNDCLOUD HERE.