You Brainwash Your Kids With Religion, So Why Not Politics?

0:01 let's start with not what our kids are being brainwashed by sure but are you trying to brainwash my kids 100% and I and I I I okay I appreciate next question I uh I shied away from this question in the early years because we were accused that you know current affairs by the way is a uh a a magazine written by socialists for socialists so they're very uh uh collectivist mentality they hate you know libertarian type people and uh it's funny their

0:31 workers their writers tried to like unionize and then they all got fired there's been some fascinating internal T turmoil about them but that's besides the point free country they're entitled to believe in whatever nonsense they want exactly uh so setting that issue aside so here's this argument from current affairs and many others in the early years that uh Tuttle twins you're trying to propagandize kids let kids be kids this is stuff for adults this political stuff wait until they're older

0:55 there's a fair of criticism I thought it was a fair criticism and and uh we got it frequently uh in the early years when this was a new thing we were trying to establish basically a new category like when you watch Shark Tank which I do religiously when there's a a person pitching a product that is for a brand new category where they have to educate the consumer about why they even need that all the sharks especially Cuban

1:16 they're always like no this is going to cost way too much cuz you've got to do the work of actually telling your consumer why they need your product and that's where we were in the early years no one really agreed with us in the early days uh about teaching kids these ideas even people who are like-minded we got criticism from our own tribe of like this is kind of weird you know why why not wait till they're a little bit older

1:37 and um well now we've got uh what are what are some of the what are some of the hits on the on the let's say other side oh A is for activism yeah uh anti-racist baby right uh what was the one that's caused a lot of brewhaha something queer something I'm forgetting the name of the book it's gotten banned in a lot of libraries yeah gender baby and all these different things so it's like everybody's playing the playing the

2:02 Tuttle Twins game now were you guys were you early or was there always a bunch of sort of politically minded stuff but it was mostly like left of center we were early for those on what I'll call but I agree with you that I hate the term the right right conservative libertarian the individualist approach we were early cuz now you've got like Brave books and prageru and some of these others that have started doing it as well uh but at

2:24 the time the left was already so-called left was already doing a lot of stuff mean Captain Planet on television years before oh yeah right a lot of propaganda and the you get the magazines and the cartoons and you know a lot of them have more recently gone woke but at the time we were kind of early and so I think that's why we got a lot of criticism from people saying this is a new thing like do we even need to do this and why

2:43 do we need to do it what I've come to believe since that time I don't shy away from propaganda or indoctrination or words like this anymore because I I try and use it as an education moment I am propagandizing children what do I mean by that I am propagating ideas if you look at just the root word of what prop again is we use it in the pejorative sense of like the Nazis that are trying to like manipulate your mind or the CIA

3:05 or the CIA we we'll get there with the true conspiracy yeah we're yeah there's all kinds of fun to be had in this conversation the the challenge is that it's all about ideas it's a war of ideas and so who are you or who is a teacher or who is a Schoolboard to tell me that they and their ideas should be what persuades my children and their worldview is what my child should be exposed to when I as a parent as a

3:27 father have the natural right to kind of educate my children and the weird thing here for us especially in kind of the I'll say kind of the Christian conservative movement which comprises a large chunk of our audience all these parents would take their kids to like Sunday school or read the Bible for kids little Illustrated Bible or whatever no one questioned teaching their kids transmitting to their kids their religious beliefs and and values and ideas everyone would oh of course you

3:51 have that right like no one would even question that and yet these very same parents were failing to do it when it comes to their political and economic and Civic values and there there was this big disconnect and it boggled my mind in the early days why is it that you feel okay doing so religiously but you feel like icky about doing it all you're really doing is you're surrendering to other people who don't share your worldview and values the

4:13 intellectual development of your children during their most formid of years why aren't you in the mix transmitting your ideas to the extent that you believe in certain truths or feel very confident in certain things I think ultimately the answer is that most parents feel very superficial in their own understanding of these very ideas because often they were products of that public fool system their understanding is very superficial so they felt insecure about ever transmitting those ideas to their kids they would believe

4:41 generically in Freedom or the Constitution or free markets or name your topic but they had no idea how to talk to their kids about it they didn't even know how to talk to a peer an adult peer or a Facebook you know comment or whatever and so that insecurity that intellectual insecurity is ultimately what we're solving for here with the tuttle's books to say you don't need to know any requisites you don't need to have studied any of this yourself just

5:02 sit down and read a bedtime story and you're both going to learn together you know I was thinking about this uh this morning because you bring up that look we raise our kids and if you if you are religious at all you raise your kids even if only mildly in your religious tradition maybe you go to maybe you go a church maybe you don't maybe that's all you do maybe you only do it occasionally but um I was a I'm like what what we

5:26 call a cradle Catholic so I went to 12 years of Catholic School I'm Italian Catholic and we talk about it from time to time on the show and I've been grappling with this in the faith domain personally because I've gotten more interested in my faith as an active matter not just as a received kind of oh I this is the thing I am and I didn't reject it so I guess I kept it and when we moved to Austin because

5:51 of uh stuff I was already sort of seeing happen in Matteo's Catholic School in New Jersey we didn't put him in Catholic School when we moved down and and so he didn't he got baptized but he didn't get any of the other sacraments you know catholicism's got a lot of Sacrament and ritual and if you and and even I like kind of don't remember why all these things are the way they are so I've raised a son who's sort of a chip off

6:15 the old block and being very like philosophically engaged and we sent him to act an academy which is like radically Socratic and so he's now 18 and he hasn't really been that brainwashed in in the faith that I I do kind of want him to have but now he's 18 so we're doing this um it's called an adult right so I'm actually going with him on Sundays and going through the process of him becoming

6:45 confirmed as if he's an adult because he is technically an adult yeah and he's he's going along I don't know that he necessarily would be doing this in fact I know that he wouldn't be doing this were it not for me I feel an obligation to do this with him and I've told him like look I think you should do come along let's see I'm not going to force you but I'm using a little bit of Parental

7:08 coercion here sure and that has made me think a lot about like this there is a a legit discomfort if you're a thinking person about oh if I want my kid ultimately to be a an intellectually curious person that holds their beliefs on their own to feet this formative time when they're young is a little weird yeah cuz we're trying to set some defaults and sometimes they even backfire like the best of intentions like we have a rebellious kid and

7:35 whatever we're going to tell them they're going to do the opposite right how have where have you you've come to a place where you're like no this is what I'm trying to do and this I'm proud of it yeah where do you self-reflect and say there is a weirdness to this MH yeah that's a I love that question so I see a lot of what we're doing is laying a foundation and people are going to build all kinds

7:56 of things on that Foundation but if we don't lay the foundation they're not going to be able to build as securely or as you know successfully as they otherwise might I'm a big believer in fact in the the Mormon faith specifically one of the big uh doctrines of that gets emphasized is agency the importance of moral agency that God has given us the the ability the right uh to act independently uh to act rather than to be acted upon and that we are

8:21 supposed to try and identify the truth act upon it share it with others but but that we are the moral actors here we are the Agents of change and we're supposed to stand up and you know do something and and so I think about that too is in the context your question as a as a dad for my kids they too are agents I I need to raise them and educate them in a way that empowers them in so far as as

8:43 possible when they're six or 10 or 15 or 18 in ways that they can act but they don't know they're learning they're humans and embryo so how so it's it's a tension it's a balance I don't have any perfect answers but but I see my role as a dad and you know as what we're doing with the tle twins is just saying here are some found foundational truths that I believe in if anything sounds weird to

9:02 you if you disagree like let's have a conversation about it I'd love to talk about it but I feel an obligation that if I do indeed understand these things to be true these religious truths these economic truths whatever I feel a duty not just with my own kids but the world to say I believe these are true ideas now if you disagree with that fine let's have a discussion and let's like maybe I'm wrong maybe you're wrong maybe we

9:23 come together but if I am so confident and believing in a certain idea I feel the need to evance angiz that idea I don't want to just keep it in myself so with my kids you know as they get older that gets a little bit easier you can have more meaningful discussions about these things but in the early years it's it's the simplified stories and the little you know uh little nuggets of of ideas just to plant some seeds just to

9:46 build that base layer of a foundation but where I try and think is like as soon as possible as my kids they're now 14 and 12 trying to have these more meaningful discussions to say like socratically you mentioned the ACT Andy what do you think what's the issue here what the problem how do we do this and try and try and pull out of them the ideas that they might have within them the biggest crime I think of the modern

10:06 school system is that it's forcing millions of kids to adapt to a single template right we're making our unique children each on their own god-given Paths of life and different talents and everything all conform to this set standard rather than adapting curriculum and and processes and stuff to the individual child I think my duty as a father is to help my kids figure out who they are not conform them to become a mini me or or conform to a template that

10:32 some Schoolboard set I want to help them figure out who they are I I feel like my own path I didn't realize until after college that this was the path for me I was going down a totally different path ideologically and uh professionally and so I often reflect and wonder if I had found my path earlier even two years but what about like a full decade what more impact might I have had today how much further down my own path uh could I have

10:57 been if I had found that Journey so for me with my kids it's trying to say here's some ideas I believe in here's this Foundation that I want you to have but let's start those discussions as early as possible I mean maybe your son's path is different than you envision maybe my own kids path is different I feel like my role is to help them figure that out and start to flex those agency muscles as early as

11:18 possible so they can realize hey I am kind of the captain of this ship what direction do I want to go how fast do I want to go rather than me telling them what they should do if you like this clip we've got more with that came from be sure to watch the full video and don't forget to subscribe to the channel so you won't miss our new videos as they come out each week