Donald Trump’s election as president-elect finds high school and college students walking out of class in protest. How dumb is that!

Today, and for eons, education is the answer to social challenges. From abuse, addiction and acrimony to zaniness.

When I completed second grade at a Franklin, New Hampshire, Catholic school, my parents moved the family to East Andover, with its one-room school house. I expected placement in third grade but the teacher placed me in fourth because there were no third-graders. Skipping third grade left me teacher-less regarding multiplication tables, reading requisites and sentence sense. Truancy was not a social option — diligence was.

Walking out on knowledge arguably acclaims replacing it. What with? One antonym is ignorance. In countless examples, life’s longevity depends on “know-how.”

Take for instance, my three-year hitch in the Marines during the Korean War when serving as a ground-school instrument flight instructor, teaching orientation procedures to military pilots. Aviators leaving an aircraft carrier to attack targets hundreds of miles ashore must successfully return to the carrier moving at sea. Continuance of those lives depended on capability. Education was a condition precedent.

Young people walking out on studies because they disagree with a political decision lawfully voted by the populace would do better giving attention to the high tide lapping at the shore of our struggling major political parties. Republican and Democrat enrollments continue shrinking. Citizens become “unenrolled” on a regular basis rather than working to better the party. No political primary of their own, their “ship” is rudderless.

Education builds ones “inner means of support.” A belief in “let’s give ourselves a chance!”

John Benoit

Manchester