Letter to the Editor: NIC’s Out Of Control “Woke” Teachers – Curriculum Plagued With Far-Left Politics and Immorality
They’re Coming For Your Children
How did it come to pass that liberal, progressive and immoral material is being presented in classes to our NIC students? Do the Kootenai County residents even know this is happening, or do most assume only good things happen at NIC?
Let me tell you a story from seven years ago about an experience my dual enrollment daughter had in English 101 in the fall of 2015. Her older siblings had been able to use the Compass Testing to get credit of English 101 and 102, but that summer, the English Department Chair made policy to no longer allow students to test out of those two classes because they were too important.
The new instructor, on the first day, assigned the class to watch a YouTube video and write a paper on it, due the next week. The video was about two lesbians doing their thing underwater. I tried to get her switched to another session but the English Department Chair would not help, saying there were no other openings. He also explained that I couldn’t do anything as a dad because she was the college student and I had no say, even though she was 16 or 17 at the time. Finally, the dual enrollment department head helped us and she moved to another session.
That was seven years ago, and that instructor is still at NIC, and maybe even has been granted tenure. One of the trustees knew the name right away and said he has had dozens of parents complain about the instructor but trustees can’t do anything. The department chair and the president hired the instructor and the trustees had no say in the matter. Now this instructor may well be in line to be appointed department chair and hire more like himself and the Trustees can’t even stop that. It’s all in the hands of the President.
More recently, students had worse experiences in his class titled “Literature and Ideas.” A book “Knockemstiff” was used that had very explicit descriptions of an older brother raping his 12 year-old sister while being spied upon by the eventual murderer of the brother, who then became a rapist of the sister. The class also read and discussed poems about terrorism such as Solmax Shariff’s “Look: Poems,” a critique of American Influence in middle-eastern countries.
Two lectures in this English course were devoted to explaining gender fluidity. The instructor explained that there is an entire spectrum of genders. We would be naive to think this hasn’t been going on in his classes every year and continues this fall. There are certainly much more wholesome literature selections that the citizens of Kootenai County should demand for use in these classes for our students.
Other experiences with the course include class discussions explaining the truths and benefits found in “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx. The class had to read “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” by Chris Hedges, a propaganda novel that freely quotes Lenin and promotes communism. The evils of Capitalism were discussed, as well as lectures about the US prison system putting blacks in prison for white profits, all under the instructor’s protection of “Academic Freedom” allowing him to teach literature as he sees fit, even with unrelated topics. Much of this was brought to the attention of then NIC President MacLennan who reviewed the complaints and ruled he couldn’t do anything about it because the instructor was protected by “Academic Freedom.”
Take a short walk down the halls of the art department and you will be shocked to see the displays of artwork that is basically pornography. Many students and instructors think this is normal. It has to stop. I would not let my children attend NIC now under the current conditions in Humanities departments at NIC, and I certainly would not have them as NIC Dual Enrollment students.
While some may think it open-minded to expose our students to all things woke, it is simply wrong. Our colleges should never teach vice and immorality as course material. Students might learn these things on their own, but our institutions should never be presenting vice as an option in course material, as that becomes an endorsement by authorities. The trustees can change policies to make that happen. Instead, trustees have been dealing with how much money to spend on roundabouts and new buildings while NIC is ruining hundreds and hundreds of our students. We have to take control back from the administration. The county citizens should demand this.
Since untenured college professors are “at will” employees, meaning either employee or employer are free to terminate employment without giving a reason.. Tenured professors have contracts with their employer, the institution, and that agreement should provide the guidelines types of freedom of academic speech the institution will permit. An institution has the right to make it clear that its Mathematics professors cannot teach their own theories in Calculus courses or that Physics professors cannot teach Greek beliefs as fact, that the atom is the smallest particle of matter, or that Political Science professors cannot teach Marxism as a preferred system or be members of the Communist Party.
The institution has the right to clarify in its contracts with tenured professors that the laws of morality are fixed and they are not free to teach ideas contrary to moral law. The US was founded as a Christian nation that followed the unchanging Ten Commandments of God. That is the unchanging Moral Law that is partially coded in Federal Law. While other places may be different, this county does not want immorality and vice taught to our students at NIC and the citizens should ensure that position.
Trustees should work to clarify the NIC policies, contracts and expectations regarding the courses taught and the bounds of their contents. Trustees can staunchly defend any professor’s choice of presentation style or teaching methods and interaction with the students during class. If they have analogies of jet engines or amplifiers they want to use to explain the concept of functions in math courses, trustees should back them. But if a history professor is explaining his own anti-American theories and revising American history for his woke ideologies, then that professor should expect trustees to initiate a disciplinary process.
NIC should be completely free to work on solving this woke indoctrination of our young people by clarifying the contracts with their tenured professors and making clear policy on these issues that align with the expectations of the community that NIC represents. These clarifications should be completely acceptable to accreditation expectations. Conservatives have handed over control of NIC and most colleges in the USA to liberal professors by agreeing to the concept of “Academic Freedom.” We have handed the liberals the keys to our students’ education on a silver platter and readily agreed to their conditions. Let’s fight back and put limitations and conditions on these professors and the administration.
This election, the citizens of Kootenai County have one chance, and maybe their last chance, to try to right this sinking NIC ship. Please vote for the TRUE conservative NIC Trustee candidates, Hartman, Sheridan and Waggoner. They, along with current Trustees Banducci and McKenzie, could realistically write and implement some of the policy suggestions described above as a solution to remove the woke immorality, filth, and socialistic material currently being taught to our students at NIC. Without a majority, these two trustees cannot make any changes, and the current NIC president will continue to defend that type of course material as a valid option under the protection of “Academic Freedom.”
