#68: Drawing a Different Path for Our Kids with Tuttle Twins Illustrator, Elijah Stanfield

Ever wondered what it's like to step off the beaten path and carve out an educational journey tailored to your child's unique needs? Join me, Cheryl, as I sit down with Elijah Stanfield, the creative illustrator behind The Tuttle Twins series, to unravel the tapestry of homeschooling. We share stories of shifting gears from conventional classrooms to the world of homeschooling, discussing the hurdles and victories that come with such a personal transformation. Elijah opens up about his decision to homeschool, motivated by his children's early boredom and health issues.

The conversation then blooms into the collaboration and creativity that fuels children's literature, as we celebrate the ten year anniversary of The Tuttle Twins. Elijah, once a corporate animator, now a cherished children's book illustrator, details the rich partnership with author Connor Boyack and how it's a testament to the untapped potential of young minds.

This episode isn't just a discussion—it's a gateway to understanding the transformative power of education and the freedom homeschooling can offer. So tune in and be inspired by the possibilities that lie within the heart of learning with my special guest, Elijah Stanfield.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us. Today. We have the pleasure of having Elijah Stanfield, the illustrator of the Tuttle Twins, with us. Elijah, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Good to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:42

You're a little famous on this podcast, I have to say, because I've been an affiliate of you guys from the very beginning. You're the first ones I reached out to, not even knowing anything about podcasting or how you can make any sort of money with it. But I was like oh, I like their stuff, let me see if I can. So you guys were kind of like my my testing the waters into the affiliate stuff. But you have, people love you guys and I love you guys. My son loves your stuff. Um, it's so awesome. So why don't you start out by well, first of all, do you homeschool your children?

Speaker 2: 1:18

We do.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Yeah, and how many do you have?

Speaker 2: 1:20

Uh, I have six. There's only about three of them still at home, so one of them's kind of almost up.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Have you homeschooled them all from the beginning?

Speaker 2: 1:29

Well, my first son, he we started off in kindergarten and he started he's not this type of kid, but he started getting in trouble, goofing off and being a distraction to the other kids and we just kind of like asked him like what's going on? Like why are you all of sudden a troublemaker? Because he kept getting in trouble, getting on the bad kid chart and everything. He's just like. I'm just so bored, I know all this stuff. Like we learned the same things over and over again.

Speaker 2: 1:53

So also at that time I had a son who had some respiratory issues. He was just born a newborn so and he was hospitalized because of something that my oldest son brought home from kindergarten. So we just started thinking about maybe just doing homeschooling and to kind of prevent him getting sick. My wife was fully homeschooled back when it was semi-illegal, yeah, back in the 80s, so yeah. So she knew how to do it and I was the one that was kind of like I'm not sure what if there's holes in their education. Even though my wife is brilliant, she's got no problems with holes in her education. So we just took the jump and never looked back.

Speaker 1: 2:28

So what state are you in?

Speaker 2: 2:29

We just moved to Tennessee, about 10 months ago.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Nice, nice. And so homeschooling laws vary from state to state. I'm in New York, so we're, I think, a little bit more rigid. What are the laws like where you are? Is it pretty lax?

Speaker 2: 2:50

Honestly, uh, what are the laws like where you are is?

Speaker 2: 2:51

it pretty lax. Honestly, I think washington state, where we moved from, was a little more lax. It seemed like there's the really more like gotta get your paperwork in, but there's a we've. I found this, this company that does, I think it's called honor school. They just do all the paperwork for you. So I just paid my 60 bucks and they took care of everything. So but I was, I was a little disappointed because I thought that Tennessee, you know our free red state there's actually some things that kind of bug me here. Overall I love it, but like they still have like raw milk laws, yeah, like even in commie Washington they have like raw milk is okay.

Speaker 1: 3:19

That's funny, because yeah, there's some work to do here. My eyes just got opened up to the raw milk world. You know, as every I feel like every month you'd step deeper and deeper into the waters of whether it's conspiracy or what, but and so now we're all drinking raw milk, but yeah, in new york it's illegal. So that's kind of all I grew. I mean, I didn't even grow up knowing about raw milk.

Speaker 1: 3:40

I didn't know it was a thing most people I know here don't know about it, but yeah, we get it like bussed in on a delivery each week. I was just eating the cheese from it.

Speaker 2: 3:53

It's so good so yeah, you know little bits Cover of night, you go and you have to like en masse. Yeah, bring it. I love that part of it. I think I like it. I think I like the illegality of it.

Speaker 1: 4:07

But it tastes, yeah, it's kind of weird.

Speaker 2: 4:08

I mean, yeah, if some of it does taste better, some of it kind of tastes barney to me, like there's, it's just like whoever does it? Some people do it better than others. But, um, I'm I'm not like a strong, like, oh, you gotta have raw milk. We have costco milk too and stuff like that. But just the idea that people can't do that is just really weird.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Right, and yes, I didn't know any different. I didn't know that even other states it was legal and it was just something in New York and a few other states that it wasn't. But the same thing with vaccines. Right, Like if this is all you know, like you have to get everything on the CDC schedule to go to school. You don't know that 30 minutes away in the next state you don't need anything to go to school. So it's kind of like until you expose yourself to it, you don't know about it. So Tuttle Twins just had their 10 year anniversary. Happy anniversary Congratulations. That's amazing. How did you get involved with the Tuttle Twins? Was this part of your creation or were you sought out?

Speaker 2: 5:01

Well, I had been following Connor for a couple of years online. I was just really impressed with the way he thought about things, articulated things and just a really good teacher. And he asked one time on Facebook like hey, I'm going to Freedom Fest, which is a conference in Las Vegas usually, and I was looking for a roommate to keep prices down. So I was like that sounds fun. So did that. We had a good time, got to know each other better. And then it was just a few months later.

Speaker 2: 5:28

I was really impressed with what he had a speech at the conference and I was just like this guy is, you know, he's really special. He's just really good at speaking, never misses a word, never fumbles, super hard worker, like he's just writing books like all the time, always got something that he's just pushing. So very impressed with him. And I've always wanted to be a children's book illustrator. Since I was young I've been doing animations and graphic design and stuff like that in the corporate world. So I just reached out to him and said, hey, have you ever thought about doing children's books, because I'd love to do those with you. And so he went and did some market research and figured out if this is going to be a viable thing, and I came back a few months later with the idea of the Tuttle Twins and we went to town.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Wow, I love that story, like it makes you feel so good about buying your product and it wasn't just like, oh, I was part of a publishing company and my editor reached out to me and you know, kind of put us in touch with each other. It was just so organic. That's awesome and it really comes through. Like I mean, my son's five, my daughter's almost two, so you know we started on your series early on. But he gets this stuff and it's so cool because you know, the older he gets, the more we read them. He's just going to understand more and more.

Speaker 1: 6:42

But these concepts that we think kids aren't ready for, you know your books prove otherwise, because they absolutely are and they don't need to grasp the entire thing. But just off the top of my head, you know certain things about laws and is this law? Is it just? Is it just because it's a law doesn't mean that it's right? You know you have those sort of values instilled in your books and the questioning of authority, and I think that's really important, especially with what is going on today.

Speaker 1: 7:08

I know part of your newsletter I was just reading that Connor sent out about Vermont, which is right near me. They're passing a law so that we can, as parents, see what our, I believe, 12-year-olds are checking out, what books our 12-year olds are checking out from the library, and I mean that's crazy, right, like especially with the other types of books that are out there these days. So how do you guys, how intertwined are you? I'm writing a children's book right now and I just kind of sought out an illustrator on Fiverr, the freelance app, and I don't know if I'm a pain in her rear end or what, but she'll send me her stuff and I'll be like it's not really the idea I had. Can you do this, can you do that? Is that how it works with you guys? Do you collaborate from the very beginning, or does Connor send you the book and you kind of run with it?

Speaker 2: 7:58

Well, the way that Connor and I work together is probably something that no one else does okay and I love working in this way.

Speaker 2: 8:04

We either one of us will have an idea and pitch it to the other one and then connor will flesh it out and then I'll come back with like, yeah, let's, but what about, if we did this, then I could draw it like this. And then he'll like go back and rewrite. There's a lot of back and forth and, uh, it's really fun. It's a it's a good intellectual exercise, because we're like we want to get these concepts right, we want to get the story right, and then my drawings, you know, to explain in a visual way what these concepts are all about. So it's really fun and challenging for me as an illustrator to be able to have that freedom to go back to Connor and say, hey, what if you?

Speaker 2: 8:40

did it. What if you said it this way?

Speaker 1: 8:42

Then I can draw it this way, and so it's really different, I'm sure, than what any other relationship, because we both know the content pretty well, and this is just the stuff that we really like to get nerdy about, so it's fun, it shows, and, yes, for anyone that doesn't know what your books are about, um, you talk about the importance of entrepreneurship, the laws, uh, basically know a libertarian kind of way of living our lives and doing things that are right, not just because so, and you have book 14 coming out currently right.

Speaker 2: 9:14

Yeah, I'm halfway through drawing those ones. I think this is it's really this one's really challenging and super fun. I love it, so I'm excited to get that out.

Speaker 1: 9:22

I saw your post on Instagram where you were kind of showing the illustration process and you know it got me thinking to. I commented when I was younger I loved drawing and you know I went to public school, as you know you probably did, and you know, even though I remember my art teacher being like, oh, that's a good drawing, nobody ever pushed me into that direction. As far as you can run with this, you could do this as a career. And you know, now that I'm 40 and I'm homeschooling my kids, I kind of am looking at things like, wow, how come nobody ever said like, hey, let's get you into some drawing classes, let's do some extra on the side? Or you know you could be an illustrator when not that I would be good at it, but it's just interesting you kind of get pushed into the herd in a lot of traditional school and how has that kind of changed?

Speaker 1: 10:13

How you homeschool? You have a job that you know. I assume you love it. You know you can be creative and I think that's one of the things about life. You know, whether people enjoy their life or not or feel fulfilled or not is if you actually enjoy what you do and have a sense of like creation to it. You know I spent 16 years in government work, so I have lots of experience not being fulfilled. How does that guide? How you and your wife homeschool.

Speaker 2: 10:39

It actually guides me a lot, because her homeschool experience is that you know that she was basically left alone to learn what she wants. She read just thousands of books. She just never stopped reading. She's a very high skilled pianist and she knows how to build things and do all these things because she was just like left alone to just figure out the world in this cabin in the woods in Delaware and she just knows everything. And everyone's always coming to me are you an expert at everything? And she's like no, she is, she's just amazing. So that self-learning aspect of it.

Speaker 2: 11:13

And then my experience in public school was just as you expressed. I just had people saying you know, you just can't, this is not a real job. You know you can't be an artist and it's just I don't. I feel really bad for most kids that go through that because I could just see how it would just destroy them. But for me I kind of was the way maybe it was the way I raised or just my personality. I resisted that. I was like that, just kind of like you know what I'll show you. And so I dug in so like way too hard with my drawing and, during high school especially, just forgot about school, got really poor grades. I just had constantly teachers telling me you're not going to amount to anything like in the real world, you're going to be toast, all these things. And turns out they were wrong. Right, I had no problem getting into college, even with bad grades.

Speaker 2: 12:03

I went to art school. I don't really recommend that to people to go get into debt for art school but um, I did. I got great grades there. I made some you know really good relationships with my professors. When I got out of school I had a nice portfolio that I sent to a media company, got a job as an animator and a video producer, did that for like ten years before I started doing Tuttle Twins on the side, but it didn't hold me back at all.

Speaker 2: 12:29

I feel like I have had a really charmed life and I really enjoy what I do. I mean it's challenging, I have to work really hard sometimes and that's just the way with all jobs. The way that I bring that to my homeschooling is I want my kids to be able to take something that they're really into and use that as a platform to teach them about life, about business, about work ethic and just really dig down and do it, and if they want to change, that's fine. You just jump to the next thing. You don't have to commit and that's what's nice about being young is you can explore so many different things and within those things art, music, writing, podcast like my son's like wants to do be try to be a YouTube star, and you know what I say.

Speaker 2: 13:11

You know you can play this many hours with your video games and then he's learned how to edit, he learns how to like, promote those videos and he's just whether he's going to do that or not. He's learning, he's really into it and, as you saw at the beginning of this podcast, he like knows how to figure out. You know how to set up microphones and cameras and all these things.

Speaker 2: 13:30

So that's just kind of the way that it's kind of like an unschooling approach. You know we do have some workbook, you know some busy work like hey, just do no chapter in your workbook things. No-transcript school because I want to focus on my music. I said, go for it. So he um learned about how am I, how are you going to pay for your recordings, your recording time, how are you gonna play for your instruments? Well, you got to get a job so he had started these businesses. He learned how to animate animate. So he did some animation on the side. He paid for all his recording. He learned how to set up shows. All of these things that go into trying to be a success in music are actually real world skills. He's very accomplished in that. So I just want to instill in my kids that if you want to work hard at something and you can find a way to benefit the lives of others, then you can make a business out of it.

Speaker 1: 14:44

Yeah, definitely. And something you said too struck me when you were talking about finding their passions and then using that as a platform to teach them other real world things. It makes so much sense that there were passions that I had as a kid, but it never amounted to anything. Because you're just part of the hustle of get up in the morning, rush off to school. You know your parents rush off to work, you rush home or you have sports after school. Then you rush home, you got to eat something, probably cheap and easy, for dinner and then you go to another sport, or it's like just this constant hustle that you don't have the time to be bored, like you were talking about.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Your wife had all this time to herself to do, learn all these things and decide what does she like, what doesn't she like. And you know so, as homeschooling parents, when we think, oh, I'm not entertaining my child 24, seven like that's okay, that's good, and I'm guilty of it too. Maybe not put them in front of the TV, right, like get, tell them to go outside, or put, put some paints or whatever in front of them, legos, blocks, like. But being bored is okay, and we can't say like oh, I feel guilty because I'm you know, because you're always taught the opposite.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Like you got to keep these, like you got to do six or seven hours of this, regimented like math, and then social studies and then this assembly line type of education. That's actually the worst way to learn, I don't. I maybe remember a few facts from my entire 13 years of public school.

Speaker 1: 16:22

You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins and their book series, and it looks like you're enjoying them too. Out of all of the brands that I affiliated with for my podcast, the Tuttle Twins is the most popular. If you haven't checked it out, click on the link in my show's description and give their site a visit. These books teach us real life principles in a way that kids can understand and, let's face it, that I can understand, so you will too. Your kids will be learning things like why a free market economy is the best way to lift people out of poverty. How property rights allow us to decide what's best for us and make decisions for our family. Why the world is a better place because of entrepreneurs who create businesses to help serve their fellow neighbors. What socialism is and why it's so destructive to our freedoms and wellbeing. How the golden rule, which is treat others how you'd like to be treated, is so important to people getting along with one another, no matter where we live, what we look like or what we believe. Their book Education Vacation is all about homeschooling and what a value that that can be. Their books go over laws, why we have them and what the role of government is supposed to be, instead of what it is.

Speaker 1: 17:28

Grab the link in my show's description and use code Cheryl40, that's C-H-E-R-Y-L-4-0, for 40% off books in the age 5 through 11 series. You can grab the link in my show's description. There will also be links there for Jibby Coffee delicious lattes powered by your daily dose of functional mushrooms, organic adaptogens and collagen protein, which is just a nice way to say it'll improve your energy, reduce fatigue, nourish your hair, skin and nails and support healthy digestion. You can use code Cheryl20 for 20% off of Jibby Coffee. I also have links to Earthly Wellness, which are clean, natural and affordable health and wellness products.

Speaker 1: 18:07

You can use code HomeschoolHowTo for 10% off of your first order, and I also urge you to check out Treehouse Schoolhouse. They have a nature study supplemental curriculum and, given that springtime is now upon us, this is a perfect time to check out their springtime nature study and really become one with nature. Let's learn what's going on around us. I can't wait to do that one with my kids. So head on over to the show's description and grab these links. Don't forget to use the code to get your discount. Or head on over to the homeschoolhowtocom under listener discounts. Thanks for checking out the show today.

Speaker 2: 18:44

I didn't really learn it. I was just learning how to not get in trouble, you know, by doing your homework and but when, when my kids want to learn something, ask a question about something, then I can really just get into it and they just they know it because they want to learn it. And yeah, all of my kids they kind of go through this similar. When they're really young, they just want to create, build forts. I have a gigantic mess back here of like pillows and blankets, draw, cut things up. I have a my youngest daughter's really into horses, so she learned how to like tie knots and she's like making a disaster in our backyard with like ropes and, you know, making webs. But she's quite amazing what she can make with rope. Um, kind of kind of keep an eye on her because it's not very safe and that's another thing you got to let kids have a little danger and stuff.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Yeah, I mean that's just the wrong way to learn, the way that the school system is and what I really try to tell parents that are worried about their homeschooling or worried about to start homeschooling is don't try to replicate that at home, the public school thing.

Speaker 2: 19:46

Do something different. I think if you can cultivate a really good relationship with your kids, teach them how to work, teach them about real life, help them learn about work ethic and dedicating themselves to a passion of some kind, and then teach them how to communicate, put that out in the world at all, your kids are going to be, like, way beyond more capable than the average high school graduate. Like, if you're worried about falling behind of high school graduate level, the only thing you actually do is if you can look, if your kids can look someone in the eye and speak complete sentences to them, you're already 80% better than the high school graduates that are coming out today. Like, don't worry about it, just healthy, happy, hardworking kids You're going to. They're going to be fine, oh, that's well.

Speaker 1: 20:33

That makes me feel good, because that is one thing my son does is he can hold a conversation with an adult, probably better than a kid his own age. He'll talk their ear off. So, ok, the other part about homeschooling is which I I have a hard time grappling with teaching them the truth. Now you guys wrote you have two volumes of history books, which I will link everything in the show's description, and I have a code, cheryl 40, for 40 percent off of your age, five through 11 series. But you also have history books.

Speaker 1: 21:02

I haven't started these with my kids yet because they're too young, but I'm really excited one to like learn it myself because, like you said, at 13 years of school and four years of college, I don't feel like I really learned anything. You know, I really want to learn it the correct way and I want to learn it with my son. I think that would be fun. But how, like? There's a lot of mistruths that are taught in the Rockefeller textbooks that we learn from in school. How did you guys construct this book to actually? You know, I, since I don't know what's in them, I'm just, I'm just saying for like 9-11, you know, there are things that they tell you on CNN, and then there's other things that are like probably went on. How do you navigate that, either with your children or as you're writing these history books?

Speaker 2: 21:48

When Connor approached me about doing history books, I was like Connor, we're not really historians Like. This is going to be really hard to get all our facts straight and then I'll have a compelling story and figure out what paths we want to take. And he was just like we just got to do it. So he kind of put me to task to learn the history. So there's a.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Just learn history, just a small thing Right.

Speaker 2: 22:08

So he's like, and then we'll have a conversation, we'll kind of like, start pushing the story together. He's a busy guy. So I have a stack of books. There's a set of books called Conceived in Liberty by Murray Rothbard. Okay, there's five volumes.

Speaker 2: 22:22

What, what he does, is he had, you know, we have, like this, this mythological version of history where these are the good guys and these are the bad guys, and Murray Rothbard's kind of like a lawyer, and he's gonna make the case, the opposite case of everything that is taught in the history books, whether he's right or wrong. He's gonna be like no, this guy was actually a bad guy and this guy was actually a good guy, and this guy was actually a good guy. He's going to take the opposite stance and fight for it. And when you have those two to compare, all of a sudden you can see the nuances between these two and it really just makes it very fascinating. So I don't agree with all of the positions that Murray Rothbard took in those books, but like a good lawyer who's, you know, defending his side, he, he's gonna give all the background story, all like all the details, all the original documents, and you're gonna be blown away by the things that have been taken out of our, our history books and just makes history so much more fun. And you know, it took us like two years, three years to put these two history books out. It was a monumental task, but there's so many like every page I flip. When I'm showing someone the history book I'm just like, oh man, this, this piece of information that we're sharing right here, is just gonna blow your mind. I don't even know what examples to use because there's so many of them, but here's the, here's the dangerous part that we were like really worried, kind of not really, we don't really worry. We've always done this. We've released so many. We're like this is going to be the end of us. We're sacrificing too many sacred cows with this one and people are going to reject us. And it never happens. People always just love it. So we'll keep doing it. The history book there's a lot of. We question a lot of sacred history, like George Washington and his Continental Army. That wasn't the only option on the table For Continental Army. That wasn't the only option on the table.

Speaker 2: 24:07

For almost a year the local militias of every state and community had been basically winning the war. They'd been kicking the British's tails and they were doing it under their own financing. They had trained themselves, they had their own and they were doing a great job. Guerrilla warfare style. That's the thing they're like. Oh yeah, they're using guerrilla warfare.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Well, the elite class they didn't like these backwoods people doing this was just like it's not respectable, like the rest of the world's going to think that we're some, just like some terrorists and dirty farmers. So we need to have a respectable army and so we need to raise taxes and create this you know, fiat currency and inflate it and and create this condom army with uniforms and we all need to march in lines and do these things. And that didn't work. George Washington lost a lot of those battles until finally, people were like you know, we need to kind of mix these two and do some guerrilla stuff like we were doing before.

Speaker 2: 24:57

But there's just kind of like this thing. That's like, yeah, we must have had the Continental Army and we have to have these taxation to support a central army and we need to have a general and a president and all these things. And I'm not saying that we don't. But it's interesting to see the other side, that there was a lot of people saying no, like even Benjamin Franklin was like the militia system is working great. Maybe you don't need to have all these taxes where we have to go to France and borrow billions trillion dollars, all these weapons, and that's something that we just never considered was an option, and but that's one of a zillion historical conversations that you can have, and so I was just really excited putting those history books together, and there's so many nuggets of like.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Oh, I never thought of that before and it's great so.

Speaker 1: 25:42

I hope you like them. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah, there is a. There's a company called history by mail and they'll you know if you sign up for it. They're an affiliate of mine that I haven't really like delved into yet, but they sent me some samples of their work and the first thing they sent is they send original documents. You know a copy of it and it was about Annie Oakley and the Spanish-American War and it was supposed to be more about her and her involvement to get women to fight in the war. But as they talked about the I forget now the ship that was taken down which kind of led us into the Spanish-American War.

Speaker 1: 26:21

I'm reading between the lines now and I'm like and the next paragraph said and they weren't sure who took down the ship, but the next day the American media said it was, you know, the, not Spaniards. I'd have to pull it up. This is a poor, poor representation of history on my part, but but I emailed the company. I said oh yeah, were you saying that America really just tricked its own people into getting into the war so that we could, because we gained territories from that war and all that? And the guy I think I don't think he was on my level of conspiracy. He was like however, you want to read it? Yeah, sure, but you know.

Speaker 2: 26:59

I mean that never happened. So obviously, obviously that was your. Your point of view is not correct because that never happens, especially in America.

Speaker 1: 27:06

We never have any false flags or propaganda, well, and so that's the hard part. So how do you even teach your own kids when you're teaching about, you know, 9-11, just, you know the intricacies of what really happened and who was behind it and how the buildings went down. And you know, because I asked my niece we were driving down to New York City a couple of years ago to fly out of there and I was like, hey, do they teach you about this in school? And she's like, yeah, and it was just a very base minimum. You know, terrorists on the planes went into the buildings and so like, how do you delve into that with your kids? Cause you don't want to teach them like the crazy conspiracies so that they go out into the world and and as they talk to the normies, so to speak, they look nuts, but then you want them to have, um, an ability to question. You know well, why would they do that and did anybody else benefit? You know, and how do you teach that to your children?

Speaker 2: 28:04

Well, I think it's really up to the way. I would just be cautious of when and how you present it, because you know you don't want to introduce too much despair and darkness to your children too early. You know like they'll make them fear the world, and at a time I did fear when I started figuring these things out, but I don't anymore, so I would just, for me, I kind of just wait till they ask questions and then give them what I know or what I believe and then and then try to have a hopeful ending to that. Like you know, it's okay. This is what an exciting time to be alive, where we get to stand up for truth and be those heroes that change the future. Right, like, yeah, so we did just come out with a conspiracy book, so that's actually for teens and I would maybe not give that to your kids because I mean, like I's some dark stuff, like the us government basically forever, but really ramped up after world war ii, the psychotically evil things that they would do, like let's, um, we want to prepare for a chemical and biological attack on american soil, so what we're going to do is we're going to release biological and chemical agents into major cities and see how many people die and see how fast it spreads, okay, like that's what someone came up with. This idea was not imprisoned and people went along with it and and never paid the consequences. But this happens all the time. So we, this book that we put out, the Tuttle Twins Guide to True Conspiracies is we really stick to the ones that we can that are basically admitted? It's like really easy to say this is true, right, but there was a mountain of ones that we were like we could do this, but there's a little bit of speculation here. But even though it's obvious, that's what happened, even though the you know, you know, for example, the USS Liberty I'm sure you've looked into that one dare not question the narrative on that. But to me it seems pretty obvious that that was a failed false flag attack on American warship and the narrative that we have to believe is that it was just an accident and you're ridiculous. Of course that was just an accident, but we didn't have the documentation that said, yes, this just an accident, but we didn't have the the documentation that said, yes, this was a conspiracy. So we didn't put it in the book. So, but that's a good one.

Speaker 2: 30:25

I think teenagers. They start to question, they want to know answers. And this is the last point. It's like they just went through the covid thing, which was the most obvious and uh, you know I don't fault one for falling, for that was the most difficult. You know, psychical warfare probably ever perpetrated on the American people and I kind of fell for it for a while too. I was just like, and then I started seeing the numbers and you can do your own research and you can look at the data and you can see this is not. What they're saying is the masks don't work. They never worked. They already had studies to show that the masks didn't work. The vaccines were not tested. They just threw all of their tactics all at the same time. So the kids lived through that and I've suggested this to people, even though we don't want to talk about it.

Speaker 2: 31:09

It would be really healthy for you to go back and sit down with your kids and say, do you see how this happened?

Speaker 2: 31:15

We made mistakes here, this was a lie. What can we do in the future? Because if you just kind of like pretend like that didn't happen, they saw things. They saw crazy things that their parents did. Their parents believed that the parents made them do, and that's going to stick with them and it's going to develop them as a person. And if you don't set that right and like be straight with them, it doesn't matter if you fell for it or not, because I did for a while we just had to sit down. It's like you know, this is not right and most of the time through COVID, what we tried to do is just really protect the mental health of our kids. Like we didn't wear masks when we had to wear masks. That was really hard. Like there's just always this constant weight on you to be those people and man. I mean I think that they learned a lot with that how to be resilient, how to stand up. So that's, if you want to teach your kids about how conspiracies work, just show them.

Speaker 1: 32:08

A couple years ago and they saw it first hand- yeah, absolutely, and I will link your book as well in the show's descriptions. Yeah, right in the beginning of COVID, when I started questioning things, someone I went to high school with, actually in a very liberal high school in New York Um, yeah, right in the beginning of COVID, when I started questioning things, uh, someone I went to high school with actually in a very liberal high school in New York, uh, sent me a link to the high wire with Dell big tree. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it yet, so I haven't missed an episode, since it's been four years now. And thank God somebody sent me that show. So I tried to share that and promote, promote, his, his work, because really that if you want to see truth with receipts, that they email you all the receipts the following monday after the thursday show and it's just like you don't need any more cnn or msnbc or local news, just watch that for your news.

Speaker 1: 32:55

And and he just had on last week how you know he was playing clips of Cuomo there, the brother of our former governor, chris Cuomo, how he clips of him during COVID. And oh, they're taking ivermectin. These people are just you know, who cares what happens to them? Let them all die. And then now he's taking it though he's got a podcast since he left CNN, I don't know and now he's. He had issues after the vaccine and he is now on ivermectin. So I'm like I'm shocked. He's even admitting to it. But and then you get to a point to where you're like is, is he? He's just an actor like someone's making him say this stuff. Right yeah?

Speaker 2: 33:40

You know I mean you don't want to like cut someone all the way off, but chris cuomo was a total.

Speaker 1: 33:45

Oh yeah, so it's his brother for the um, but you know.

Speaker 2: 33:49

so there's a debate, I guess, between him and this gentleman named dave smith, and dave smith is a really good debater and um, he'll draw out those hard questions like, like he'll, that debate will be good. I'm not sure when it is, but if you want to Google it you might find it. They're going to talk about the COVID thing, and where Chris Cuomo wants is trying to say and how? And Dave's going to kind of like hold him to it and kind of put the fire under him. So I'm interested in that debate, yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:18

Yeah, awesome, the fire in the room. So I'm interested in that debate. Yeah, yeah, awesome. So I had a guest on a couple of weeks ago, andrea, which is kind of how I got following your page, because she's a big proponent for being against homeschool funding.

Speaker 1: 34:28

Right, it's like we all pay in taxes to our public schools. If you don't send your child, you kind of feel like what a waste. And then if the government says, hey, let me give you a little cut or a little credit or maybe a voucher, you know you'll feel like, ok, we're even. But what Andrea was kind of saying is all right, that's step one. What about step four, five and six, like what are they then going to take from you? And after they dangle these carrots, what are they going to do with it? And she had referenced your article in that episode and I linked it in that show's description and I read it and started following your page from that and reached out to you for today. So what has been your involvement with kind of researching the funding and how that would play out in homeschooling life?

Speaker 2: 35:15

So I'll just give a little background. There's this thing called school choice and it's been around like the school vouchers, the education savings accounts, and that was created by libertarian conservative economist I'm blanking here. He's like the most famous economist that's ever lived and I can't think of his name.

Speaker 1: 35:34

I went to public school, so don't ask me.

Speaker 2: 35:37

Oh my gosh. Well, he said this is a step toward, you know, creating a free market in education, because he's against state schools, government schools.

Speaker 1: 35:48

Are you trying to pick a curriculum but feel a little overwhelmed at the variety of options? Me too. I mean, how do you pick a curriculum when you don't know what each one has to offer? That's been my biggest problem. Well, I am here to help. I just launched a premium content series, psst. That means it's $3 a month, which will just help cover the cost of running the podcast.

Speaker 1: 36:08

In my curriculum series, I interview homeschooling students and parents and curriculum creators about specific curriculum each week so that you can take the guesswork out of your curriculum choices. I'll be asking questions like what does the day-to-day look like with this curriculum? What does it cover from a bird's eye view? How long does one lesson take to complete? How many lessons does the curriculum contain and what does it cost? Did you have to order the book or could you download them and print them somewhere like your library?

Speaker 1: 36:34

Does this curriculum have a lot of games, writing or crafts, and did your child enjoy this curriculum? Can you do it with more than one child at a time? And if I did this curriculum with my child, would I need to add any sort of supplements to it? These are all questions that I've had while I search for the perfect curriculum to suit my son's personality and my expectations. Let's face it there is no one curriculum out there that will work best for every child and adult, so I invite you to join me in my search to find out what every curriculum has to offer, so that you can feel confident in your curriculum choices and enjoy your homeschooling journey that much more. Right where you find all of the Homeschool How-To Podcast episodes, you'll see my curriculum series and you can subscribe today and you can subscribe today.

Speaker 2: 37:19

So everyone just kind of like said, yeah, this is a great first step, this is a dramatic step toward a free market in education. So I just kind of took it, you know.

Speaker 1: 37:28

Milton Friedman.

Speaker 2: 37:29

Andrea yeah, milton Friedman, you know, the most famous guy in the world, anyway. So we were having this discussion on Facebook about school choice, and then Andrea comes in. She's like guys, this is just socialism. Like I can't believe you're actually falling for this. And I was like gosh, who is this lady? She's really embarrassing me. So I went over to her page. She's got like 150 followers. I think she's got quite a bit more now, though, but she just kept, and I was like you know what? She's right, but this is just a step toward it. So I started to listen to some debates, listen to some interviews, read a couple things, and then you just put two and two together and kind of see that this is not a step in the right direction. This is a step in the very wrong direction. So, on the surface, the first thing you'll see is the Department of Education. The Department of Education didn't need to be a whole department. Why couldn't we just take the school superintendents of all the states come?

Speaker 2: 38:30

have them organize a couple times a year and come up with, like you know, match their curriculums and stuff. But we had to create a whole department. Why is that? Well, because then it could be funded by Congress and then we could bribe all these state legislators, governors and school superintendents with federal money and then they would do what they wanted. Right, that's just the obvious, that's just the norm, that's how they do things, that's how the federal government works. We have a printing press. We're going to inflate the money and we're going to take all this fake money and just pump it into and buy off your politicians. So, on the surface, that's what school choice is going to do here Now. But what I also started to see was like and just being with the Tuttle Twins. Okay, so let's just see how school choice will play out with the Tuttle Twins.

Speaker 2: 39:09

All of a sudden, there's going to be, you know, hundreds of thousands of moms with $10,000, $50,000 of cash from the government in their pockets, with, you know, burn holes in their pockets, right, and uh, they're gonna scope, I'm gonna buy some total twins books. So we're gonna have this influx of sales like, wow, you know, we're, we're getting all this business. We gotta build up our warehouse. We gotta employ new people, we gotta make more products, and they're like well, we just have books and a couple you know things we need to create like day camps and, uh, micro schools, and we need to have, like these really expensive things to kind of match this available flow of money.

Speaker 2: 39:44

And then, once we get reliant on that, when we get addicted to that new money, that tax money, it's just like. And then they say, hey, you know what, like this is already the case. Oh, one of your books says God, so we're not going to buy that. Well, if they say you know you're talking about freedom too much, so we're not going to buy that. Well, if they say you know you're talking about freedom too much, you need to be more balanced. And at what point are we going to go? No, we're not going to change our books. And then we have to fire all of the people and downsize our business. Like that's going to be very painful and sad.

Speaker 1: 40:10

Now they can say you can use this money but not on Tuttle Twins books, only on approved curriculum. Yeah, so now? Yeah, so now you're not getting those sales.

Speaker 2: 40:17

Right. So we could do, yeah, we're just going to close down shop and we'll sell these out of our basement again. Or we could say, well, maybe we should come up with some products that are kind of like not so opinionated, and pander to that, and so that's just Tuttle Twins. Now there's going to be tens of thousands of other businesses doing the curriculums, doing the same thing there and like the micro schools that are coming up, the school co-ops that you're right now like a hundred dollars a year, you know, my kids go to once a week to. The school co-op costs a hundred bucks for little things. People are going to stop volunteering because there's just this extra cash that's just going to be available and you're going to want to give it to your friends or you're going to give it to your co-op. You're like, here let's just shovel all this money in our co-op, yay, but you're going to get addicted to that, and that's I think that's the obvious strategy is they want you to get addicted to this and then they're going to start pulling the strings. So who is they?

Speaker 2: 41:06

I think what's going on is the. The public school system is is bleeding out. It's fit. Everyone sees that it's just kind of garbage. I think we're up to like 10% of students are homeschooled or private school. Now that's a lot and it's just growing exponentially right now. And I think what's going on is that the writing's on the wall and because if you get any more, if you get 25 percent, 30 percent, people are going to start to see, you know, we don't, we shouldn't be funding, continuing to increase funding for these public schools when only 30 percent, and there's 30, 40, 50% people, you know, backing out of the system and finding alternative ways to educate their kids, and so they're going to lose their standing to continue this funding. And we spend how many hundreds of billions of dollars on this education system? So I think the ratings on the wall and they're saying you know, we can co-opt this by introducing this money and take it over, and so instead of having this socialist style education system, we're just going to have a fascist style education system.

Speaker 2: 42:06

And I mean that's the true word fascism. Most people just don't know what they mean when they say it. But this combination of private business with public management and government money, that's fascism. And to top it off, like I'm just, I just kind of see, like this social credit thing, this digital currency kind of starting to come up in the back, and I just kind of see it all connected that they're going to have us and, like Tuttle Twins, might eventually say, no, we're not gonna, we're not gonna do this. But I don't see very many other business because we're founded on the principles of this is not right, so we can only go so far before we have to close up shop. But your co-op, your micro school, your private school they're going to be like no, we're going to keep this cash flowing, baby, and so I just kind of feel like that's the end game, and I think it's a real shame because right now, what I'm seeing in Tennessee and I saw in Washington is there's all these real free market solutions coming up to educate your kids.

Speaker 2: 43:05

It's not really expensive to educate your kids. Most of the stuff is free online. For like 350, 400 bucks you can buy every single Tuttle Twins book, which includes an economics curriculum from little kids all the way through college level. The history books that we're putting out are really big history Like. If your kids grasp that stuff, they're going to be more knowledgeable than the expert college professors in history. This is all very affordable your hundred dollar a year.

Speaker 2: 43:30

Co-op is affordable and I just imagine like Facebook coming out with like I don't know, not that I'm going to do this, but like a meta school for free. You know, you put your goggles on and you can go through the Amazon forest and learn all these things, and that would just be free because they want to get your kids sucked into the metaverse. But these are free market solutions to the need, the desire for people to leave the public school system and educate their kids. So we're building it right now. The free market is building the solution right now and it's just going to exponentially draw people away from the public school system into it.

Speaker 2: 44:02

This is going to ruin all that. Do you think meta is going to give free access to the metaverse when there's moms with, you know, 50K in their pocket? It's not going to be free. This is just going to ruin the free market opportunity that we have to, you know, get rid of that public school system.

Speaker 1: 44:19

And most homeschoolers. It's not that you know it's a group of greedy people, it's not at all but something about paying your taxes, having to pay it. They are taking this from you, whether you like it or not, and then like, oh, I'll give you a small portion back. You know it's very by design, right that it does.

Speaker 1: 44:43

And something that Andrea had brought up too when I talked to her about this is she said you know you have elderly people in your community and they're paying school taxes. They don't have kids in school anymore, or maybe never did in that district, so they're already paying to the school. Now they're paying more in taxes because now they have to pay the people who are choosing to homeschool. So they're going to be angry that they're now paying more because you have a different choice for your child and now they're going to have a say in. You know who gets elected and what laws they're putting through. For instance, if we want laws restricting what this homeschool voucher or you know the tax credits are going to push through, you know they're going to be more apt to vote what laws are coming through that are going to limit or restrict homeschooling, because now they have a piece of that, too, because they're paying their taxes, which you're receiving as a homeschooling family.

Speaker 2: 45:36

Yeah, there's definitely a conflict of interest there isn't there.

Speaker 1: 45:39

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2: 45:41

I think what's kind of interesting is with that whole like and I agree with the arguments that a lot of people make for school choice I actually believe are correct I think that the competition will make education better. It will allow people of lower income to homeschool their kids, and you are going to be able to utilize funds that have been taken from you through taxation. So I definitely get the idea of it, but it's just not going to play out in our favor, in my opinion.

Speaker 2: 46:14

I think, what's going to happen is as more people come away from the public school system and what it's going to reveal to people is that this is public school, like universal, everyone goes to public school.

Speaker 2: 46:27

It's going to become like government welfare schools, which is actually what they are, and so, like, the facade of like this is the premier educational thing is going to go away and people are just going to realize for what it is, this is just government welfare schools and the the coolness of that is going to go away and people are going to, you know, back off and enjoy the free market private institutions. Because a lot of the arguments I hear for these is like are the same arguments that we hear for, like the universal basic income. You know, there's a lot of people that just can't afford to homeschool, there's's a lot of people that can't send their kids to public schools. So you're going to say that this is the solution for that, but universal basic income, like to provide shelter and food for children, is not necessary. You got to you can't choose both on principle. So that argument's just got a bunch of holes in it.

Speaker 1: 47:15

Yeah, and I worked for the government for the last 16 years. I just put in my resignation which it's like you, just kind of like the taxation thing I for 16 years heard you're going to get this pension, this pension, this pension I talk about it on here all the time and that it was just ingrained in me that that I will be set up in my retirement years. I am going to just enjoy it because I'm getting this money and it's taken me a good four years to like come to terms with. That means nothing Like one. They could collapse the dollar tomorrow and a pension wouldn't even be there. Ok to what? What good is a pension if you missed all the years with your children? You could have been, you know, living life with them instead of in the hustle. And three, if you aren't doing anything that you enjoy doing and you're just sitting in a cubicle like counting the days till this pension. Really, what's the point of life at all? So it's, it's taken kind of a on indoctrination, I guess, for me to go through and it's it's taken a long time.

Speaker 1: 48:25

And you know I started the podcast because I was like, well, in new york they were masking three-year-olds, uh, at daycares back in 2020. So that's when we pulled our our son 2021 maybe and we were like, all right, we're not doing this, what's? And I was like I don't know, I don't know if I want to homeschool. I can't like sew my own clothes or milk a cow, and you know. So I started like kind of talking to homeschoolers and interviewing them and I was like, let's, let's put this into a podcast. And my husband was like, all right, that's actually a good idea. So he never really thinks my ideas are all too wonderful, but he was okay with this one. So I ran with it. But yeah, I just it's. I think I agree with you, it's becoming the new normal and people are going to start looking at public school like, oh yeah, you go to public school. And we got to keep in mind that even the private schools aren't much better because they still get funding from the state and the government.

Speaker 2: 49:27

Yeah right, I really recommend, at least for the younger kids, just keep them at home. They're going to learn. They just do. They just soak up all sorts of. If you just spend an hour a day two hours a day average with your kids, having conversations with them, it's all going to come out. This is back in I guess it was 2021 or something.

Speaker 2: 49:42

I went. I said I'm going to teach the kids about, you know, flight and aerodynamics and all this stuff. So I went and bought all these contraptions like a glider, a hot air balloon and kites and I was going to teach them like the physics of flying. And I started teaching them and the very first day the kids like this is fun, but we already know all this, like okay. So I went down my list of like all the subjects that I was going to cover that month and they said uh, yeah, we saw this all on um story bots, like it's just a tv show. So they, it's just so easy. They just soak up everything, like just don't worry about it. And then if you have a kid that is very studious and he's very mechanically inclined and all these things, then you should look into like some private tutoring or if they want to do like the Harvard path, like I want to go to Harvard or Yale or whatever Columbia.

Speaker 1: 50:35

Become a Freemason.

Speaker 2: 50:39

Right, whatever. If they want to do that intellectual path, that studious thing, get all the degrees then, you should figure out what that's going to look like.

Speaker 2: 50:49

They might have to jump through those private school hoops and make all those look good, but for the majority of kids I think that's not the best. That's not where their brain is wired. Is to be a mechanical engineer. You always want to keep those doors open though, in case they want. You don't want to say, well, you're going to be an entrepreneur. They might be, you know, they really might have a passion for mechanical engineering. So you need to be prepared to say this is not going to be one of my kids that I'm going to be like oh yeah, just you know watch Storybots and play Roam in the woods.

Speaker 1: 51:18

And yeah, they might have to learn a little book work.

Speaker 2: 51:21

They might have to get down and do the book work yeah. But so you got to play, you got to be aware. But you're the parent you know the best.

Speaker 1: 51:35

So just spend a couple hours with them every day and you're going to be fine. Awesome, well, I'm so excited for Maybe I should just get them now and read them myself and then, like, do it later with my son. I don't know, I'm so interested. And your conspiracies book, I'm really excited for that. So, elijah Stanfield, thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker 2: 51:54

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been great to talk to you having me. It's been great to talk to you. This has been awesome.

Speaker 1: 52:00

Have a wonderful evening you too. Bye-bye. Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how-to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.