If the exercise were carried out as written above, it would have been very different.
The exercise expected students to resist, which would then lead to the discussion of why. This "professor" went further, forcing the resisting students to actual stomp on the symbol.
The exercise could equally have been written to put an American flag on the ground, or to burn a paper copy of the flag with a cigarette lighter, to achieve the same discussion goals.
The "professor" was completely at fault for not following the lesson plan as written.
Of course, my post presumes that there is a valid point to the exercise if this were a university-level critical thinking class. Given that the "professor" is the head of the county Democratic Party, I would suspect that his goals were more to tear down existing cultural symbols in the minds of children, not to teach them to explore the significance of the symbols to themselves.
-PJ
It appears that a LOT of them did.
However, only the MORMON fellow had the gumption to complain effectively.
Do we KNOW this?
Perhaps he did follow it.
Who could have predicted that anyone would comnplain to higher ups?