Episode #45: You Are Qualified: Home Schooling Ideas & Techniques W/Russ Barlow

0:05 So I've said it before on this podcast, I don't like talking about a problem without talking about the solution. I've had a couple of episodes where I feel like we've done a really good job of breaking down, just how messed up public education system is, and just how much danger there is there. So, on this episode, I have rust borrow on again, talk about his family's experience in home school, rest breaks down exactly how he and his wife were able to educate their children at home with a practical easy to follow method. What I'm hoping you've listener takes away from this episode is a knowledge that you can educate your own children and that despite what the so-called experts say you are capable and qualified to educate your children.

0:46 If you head over to my YouTube channel, you can see the material thrust uses in this video. Now, like, last time, if you go to Mormon Renegade.com and click on the episode page, you're going to find a code that you can use to get 20%. Sent off the materials rust talks about in references in this episode that's next on this episode of the Mormon Renegade podcast. So, to be the people, we want to be the type of people that can be a light to others. There are some steps we need to take in order to prepare, certainly we need to prepare spiritually, we need to increase in our knowledge of the fullness of the restored gospel. But we cannot Overlook the necessity of being prepared. Physically.

1:28 Look, I've said on this podcast a few times that I feel hard times are coming our way. We know from early church leaders that being prepared, physically will be of the utmost important. That's why until the 22nd of January I I have partnered with Marcelo Surge ovilus from food storage Depot to give Mormon Renegade podcast listeners, a special opportunity to learn from an expert on how to not just survive. But to thrive in any emergency situation, if you go to Mormon Renegade.com, you will see a post that says, emergency prep, not just to survive, but to thrive click on the link on that post for. And for just $17, you're going to get a five-day course that outlines principles and practices to thrive.

2:11 In any emergency scenario. Now, if you want to take your prep game to the next level you can sign up for the forty, seven dollar option, which will include an audio visual recording of the five day seminar. So, you can go back and review and you'll also receive an extra day at that seminar where you can ask questions to tailor your prep plans, to your individual needs. Again, go to Mormon Renegade.com, click that link and get signed up, prepare now to thrive and be a light to others because of your generosity. Last year, I was able to Oh, by better audio equipment and software. I can't tell you how much it meant to me. That not only did you spend your time here with me on the podcast but also that you found enough value. In what I'm doing that you donated the podcast upgraded this year, I want to continue to grow. Now I want to add video to the podcast continue to help you my guess a myself connect better through the show. The other feature I'm working on for this podcast, is something I have to remain vague about for now. But what I can say Is that it's something that will help us better connect as fundamentalist and traditional LDS. Folks, now to get that equipment for the video content, I want to do and to build the infrastructure for the other project with this podcast donations would certainly be welcome or you can go to Mormon Renegade.com. Click that supply store button and get some new swag. New stuff will be out soon as well. Now if you can't afford to you either of those two things, I totally get it.

3:38 Maybe just keep the podcasting your Where's that will be blessed with those resources? Again, thank you for everything you do as well as for listening to the podcast. You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast. Well, I'm back again with Russ Barlow and last time the two previous times Russ and I were were together and having conversations we first kind of cover, just the basics of the universal model and I was just fascinated with that.

4:32 And we kind of talked about, you know, how the universal model. Not only reveal certain things about science but it also is a way that it kind of helps program. I shouldn't say program. That's That's that's the wrong word, teaches people. How to think critically and and allows a different mindset for Learning and then rest came back on and full disclosure, we had a conversation that just scared the crap right out of me when you start tracing back, just how how Insidious the roots of progressivism and Marxism. And I'm just going to call it like, I see it here, even Luciferian. Some of the things were in public education. Now, as I've said before, I'm not the kind of guy that likes to just say, you know, hey, here's a problem. I want to give you the listener, some solutions. So today on the podcast, Russ and I are going to have a conversation about his experience in him and his wife teaching their children and also about truth Seekers and what that is.

5:43 So with that, Russ, Dude, it's always good to see you man. I appreciate you coming back on. It's great to see you too. Dave. You know I think this is something that's very near and dear to my wife and I and our family. And you know, all the other things that we talked about about how education got where it is the universal model. It's all kind of meaningless, unless we can figure out how to take that information into our families and give our children. The things they need the tools, they need to stand against this kind of a progressive rewriting of our history and a progressive taking away of the truth. And that's, that's our whole point. Is what can we do to give our kids, the proper tools to fight this and to win this battle? So what?

6:30 Let me ask you this, before we Dive In Too Deep, do you remember there being like a breaking point at, which you said? Okay, enough's enough, we're going to teach the kids ourselves there actually were more than one breaking point because we have 15 children, and they didn't come all at once. They came a little here and a little there. Probably one of the biggest upsets in our whole life was our, first our oldest daughter, that's our third child was deaf. And when we were presented with that idea, it was I think a lot of people kind of have this idea that. Well, you're going to grow out of it, right? You can teach them and they'll grow out of this deafness. And when we were talking to the lady, that was kind of helping coach us and she asked us this question. Do you think that It's worse to be blind or deaf and most of us that see feel like it would be worse for us to be blind. That it would be for every death, we can get around. We can see right, right.

7:34 But in fact, it's far worse to be deaf, because being deaf at starting out life at a young age of being deaf means, there's no language and if there's no language, there's no way to remember things. There's no way to associate things, and there's no way to create relationships that Ask because if you can't hear, there's no way to connect all these dots. So given the think given the worst handicap deafness is actually by far today, you have a deaf Community but you don't have a blind Community because the deaf Community have have to come together on their own terms. So deafness is by far a long term or long term and a more difficult handicap to deal with especially our deaf daughter is going to be in the hearing world are associating that so that that really turned our old world upside down in. And when you were sending your kids to school, where there any programs or anything like that, that they offered to try to help bridge that Gap?

8:44 Well, that's actually, we kind of like to jokingly say that we had two kids in college, when by the time we were in our 20s early 20s. That's because one of them are deaf. Daughter went to a hearing on to a hearing impaired program at one college in Nevada, Clark County Community, College CCS n and the other or son or older son. He had a speech impediment. They had a program at UNLV and so, our kids would go off in the morning to you and I will be in the ccs and they were only five, you know. So that was your thing. Nice, nice, but you know, what happened for us at that time. Is that because there wasn't a lot of programs.

9:26 There wasn't even a testing program in place, in Nevada, that Heidi got pretty involved in actually spearheaded being a part of an Alexander Graham Bell Foundation here called sound Foundation. We were acting President and Vice President, she was mostly the the one that did all the work, but she not only got involved in the program of taking the our deaf daughter who had a little bit of residual hearing and helping. Learn how to live and function in the hearing world. So she actually learned to talk, she learned to use a little bit of residual hearing and then about the time she was 12 we were able to get Cochlear implants for so she functions completely in the hearing world but that was a battle. And the long-term thing, what happened is that we got involved created a parent infant program, where we would teach the kids and our own business.

10:22 We had a little office upstairs, go to conference room. We have people come over and she would work with and teach parents of deaf kids how to communicate with them? How to help them and you and I'll be like the program so. Well, they actually ended up importing it and taking it and making it part of their program. The other thing that we did was she was instrumental in getting early hearing intervention testing done at all the hospitals. That's now a law in Nevada where babies are born in their automatically tested for hearing loss. So that You can catch it early earlier, you can get it, the better. So that was kind of the that time in our life was shaped quite a bit by our involvement in teaching, deaf children how to speak and orally.

11:07 Communicate, the oral World, hmm. And but that was kind of the, the impetus for like, With you know, you guys feeling like hey we can do this better than anybody else could. Well there was a we weren't homeschooling so much there because we have all they were always in these special programs and so in the special programs we were involved in it. That was part of the requirement as we had to go co-teach and and Heidi also worked with when she went into regular mainstream Elementary School, she would go sit in the classrooms and she would teach the teachers how to do. This, she actually had a some really cool ways of teaching teachers, how to teach speech sounds and how to treat each and then Heidi would have to bring it home, teach our daughter. All of this information that she was going to learn at school so she was pre-teaching and then sending it back and it was a way of taking whatever they were going to teach and learning the language.

12:07 Mostly, that's what it's about. It's about feeding language and about learning language. What we did not realize is that all that was kind of training for us to understand how home schools ought to work in a family and some of the things that are more important, what we've what we've lost. But the next thing that came along as we had twins, and they cling girls, they're also autistic. And so that was a whole nother. That's a, that's like level 2. So the the deaf and hearing-impaired was level one. That was a learning experience. And our house was never quiet after the death daughter because you and I, if you, if I were to ask you to describe an apple Dave, go ahead.

12:52 What, how would you describe an apple? You were just in an apple. Yeah, it's a fruit that grows on a tree. It can either be red or green or golden in color because it's a fruit, it has seeds inside of it. It's edible and it's delicious. So that's really great. But if you think about all the words, you just use that have no meaning, right? Delicious edible from a tree unless, you know where you're outside. There is a tree about 20 to 30 percent of the words. You just used are disconnected to a deaf person because they've never heard that. They don't know that word you and I pick up language just in the random thing. But a deaf person has to be taught that and it has to be repeated about a thousand times over and over again. Pounded in, we just pick up naturally. They have to be taught that.

13:44 And so what Heidi would do is she would narrate life and you would think that you did a better job than most people when they're first introduced to the idea, but she would take a nap and say, oh, look at this apple, this apple is round, the round apple is red. If we look, there's bumps on the top and then on the bottom, there's a bump and there's a stem that comes out. The stick comes out of the top. This stick comes out of the round apple with its red that has a bump. And okay. Now take that and go on and you could talk about that Apple for a really long time that meant there was no quiet time in the house except for when everybody who's bad, right?

14:24 Right. wow, you you guys really did have kind of like The gamut of what the school would classify, a special needs across the board. Sure. And then when we with the autistic twins, they weren't actually been a different figure out that they were autistic. And so actually after they were out of school so they didn't know what was wrong. They were just these issues. They were having. And one of the things that Heidi dove into is to try to understand brain injury. Autism is actually just a brain injury so if you really Help somebody with autism. You need to understand the brain. That's the same thing that happens. If you have a stroke or the same thing that happens. If you have something in that can happen during birth, you can have a like an almost heart attack, where that the baby doesn't get air or blood or something oxygen and and it's called dyspraxia.

15:22 So that dyspraxia can actually hurt the brain and it takes time to overcome that speech impediments kind of like a stroke or something. So learning about brain injury. Was the next thing that we dove into quite a bit. Heidi actually got really deep into that too and she developed a program with a friend called B, where she would flash little pieces of information rapidly over and over again. So it just be like a lot of information in front of the, these, these two autistic girl and she would also use tactile learning. So she would put things inside a box where they'd have to Feel what it is like peanut butter or sandpaper or feathers, or really gross things or whatever she would do, all that because it was a way of connecting and reprogramming, the brain. That's what happened is that in an autistic or in a brain injury that the brain somehow Has a Miss fire and it has to be retrained on how it can connect to make new connections. Now, something that happened along the way. They were also in special programs. So we were kind of in the schools and and Heidi would not only do these IEPs, these individual education programs for our kids.

16:39 She became an advocate for others, and she would have these meetings where School administrators or teachers or principals, they would try to save all. They can't do this and they don't, and she knew her way, well enough that if she came to those meetings, they pretty well, knew whatever she said it was going to go is going to happen because she have the Firepower, that if she needed to talk to attorneys and follow due process, they knew she would know how to do that. So they were, they were on their guard and on their toes when she showed up for sure. And she's she's an introvert actually, but boy, when you get, she gets Unleashed in front of somebody over kids, that introvert goes away. Way.

17:23 And this incredibly powerful woman comes out better go away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No I can I've seen my wife get? Yeah. You know, we always eiu. Always used to. Wow, you kind of think to myself, here comes, you know, the Mother Bear, right? And being a guy who was raised in Alaska. I know for a fact that there's nothing more dangerous than a mama bear, protecting her. Cub so well, and What she, she had an uncanny ability though to make the enemies or friends are for the most part. Those that wanted that were there for the wrong reason, never did become friends, but she would, for example, go sit in a classroom and the teacher would get so uncomfortable because you'd be sitting back there taking notes, it was because she was just observing.

18:13 And then she'd go home and she'd create kind of a workbook or cue sheets. You do this massive amount of work, go into the teacher and say, okay, here's a tool that can help you do this. Those teachers would often take that from then on for the rest of their careers. That's what they used as their Baseline for poor teaching. So, this is there's a lot of stuff that kind of came to play, like, working on the brain injury and dealing with the deafness and dealing with the other things we, as we went along. And that that's all part of what shaped our homeschool Journey. Now, what we really, Really did is at first we just pulled the kids out of Junior High.

18:57 We junior high was the worst time so we would let them go into Elementary because we had so much going on. And then she would pull them out for junior, high. And then when they go back into High School finish out, that's kind of how we did it for the first few kids. and that worked out pretty well until some things started happening at an incident with With one of our daughters, it local school here and it was, it was just time she saw that she was walking and it was like the Sea of darkness and it wasn't that they were people, you know, kids that were of different ethnic background.

19:38 It was that there was this kind of Darkness that was over the whole body of the students that were walking out of that school and she looked over. And she thought, oh, there's one that's just bright. Right. And why did I wonder what who she is when she realized that was our daughter and and that was when the spirit said, get her out now So that was the big change and right after that, we pulled them all out of everything. There was one event that kind of confirmed that to about the same time as she pulled up to the elementary school we had. I think two kids, maybe three kids that were going there at the time and as she pulled up, it looked like she said, she described it. It looks like a bank run, like, people were just kind of going there.

20:26 You know what it is? And as she walked in because she's had this relationship with people over these years doing these things, the one lady caught her eye and she kind of Nodded to her, she Quicks straddled our three kids out. And they got in the car and we left every other kid in that school was locked down but on buses taken to an off-site they were doing a full shooter kind of a mock and they wouldn't let parents even talk to their kids or have their kids for about three to four hours after that they took him. They bust them and took them off to another undisclosed school and You know we didn't have to go through that but that was kind of about the same time that it was.

21:14 Okay we're done. We're out we're completely out. So that was the Catalyst. You know I remember just real quick my experience. I remember being bored to tears in school all the way through and I didn't know it then because I was kind of immature and it's not that I'm a whole bunch more mature now but a little bit I can look back with hindsight and one of the things that that that I noticed was that I was really good in the subjects, I liked right writing English History and a few electives other than that I just had no interest and There was just kind of a lack of trying there. Fast forward now.

22:12 I'm pretty certain that that my son has ADHD. That's what the school diagnosed him with or add, excuse me. Why don't one of them and they wanted to cram drugs down his throat? It was like look this is what we want to do and I'm like, absolutely not, absolutely not. There's nothing wrong with it. I mean I sympathize with the teacher, right? She's got 30 kids and and she can't necessarily devote a whole bunch of time to to my son. So we, we took our kids out of school and this was right before the pandemic. Russ, this was probably this was probably The fall of 2019. So we take our kids out of school and they start doing homeschooling and it's kind of an online format, kind of a thing.

23:08 And the first thing I noticed was that the kids. My two kids, they just wanted to sleep right now. I have six kids total. These are our last two. These are our twins. And for like the first week and a half, they just wanted to sleep. And I couldn't figure it out and I honestly think it was like a detox time. I don't know how else to describe it, right? Because they just I could I didn't realize it at the time, probably, because it was just always the way it was. But I look back now, and every time they came home from school or right before they went to school, they were just amped up, right?

23:53 And not in a good way. Not in like, hey, excited sort of way. It was like, anxiety. and when they got home, And they realized they didn't have to go back. They just kind of almost exhaled. And I remember my wife and I were talking like, we should really get him up and I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe we should just let this go for a week or two and then pick this back up, but What I've noticed is that my kids don't have nearly the anxiety that they once did. They went out and got jobs because the other thing I noticed was that to complete the the stuff that we asked him to complete, that's required. They're getting it done and I don't know, four to six hours tops.

24:41 And so I'm like, well, what what the hell were you doing the other? Three hours of the day? Why you were there, right? And this raises a whole bunch of questions. And so they went and got jobs and and they're doing fantastic. I mean they're passing their courses with better grades and what they had before they are getting real world experience. So you're talking to a guy who used to say homeschooling for weird. Those right, I'll not going to lie, I was that guy. I was like, oh your kids are gonna be so awkward and backwards in the end. It's not going to be good and and now I tell my adult children, I'm like, you may want to think about keeping them home and not sending them off to school. You bring up a couple of good points and one of them is will go through in a minute and talk about that myths about homeschoolers.

25:31 But, you know, we live in a culture, the The Latter-Day Saint culture is one of not homeschooling. They put such an emphasis on state schools and church schools, and they actually back in the 80s late 80s. They came out with letter, that was read from the first presidency that were the signs of apostasy. And this was it about this during a time when there was kind of this movement of this Patriot movement, a little bit different than the one today, but it was a pig Create movement and that was where people were saying they don't have to pay taxes is you're a free man, you don't have to get a driver's license because you're a, you have this, you know, this constitutional right to drive a car.

26:19 And it became kind of a big, big deal about these things that these Patriot movement people were doing, and at that particular time, there were the put together a list of what kind of a person is in danger of apostasy because of these things. And one of them was excessive attention to things like Patriot movement or being involved in that. But one of the other things was home, school home. Schooling was actually Mark of a potential apostasy and another thing was too much attention on certain books of scripture like the book of Isaiah. So the very things that we should be doing, were included in a list of things that would recognize people as potential apostate behavior. And so what that did is it sort of set up a culture that not only did you have to fight the normal myths? Of homeschooling.

27:20 But you kind of had to go against your whole culture because you are considered Potentially an apostate and that was in Utah. Wasn't so much in down here. But that was a, an interesting thing, they have to fight. And I think that's the reason so many members of the church and even the Divergent groups that have grown up with this kind of idea that homeschooling is for the fundamentalist homeschooling. And for those people, they're off the grid that are kind of cooks. Like you said, they're, you know, they're kind of weirdos. So so let me ask you this. Because, obviously, I didn't become a Mormon, kill, 1995, but wasn't Howard not Benson either in the first presidency or the president of the church during those days. And he was, he was a pretty stalwart Patriot, right? Yes, he was actually.

28:15 And so it wasn't him that put this out there and, you know, Benson, I believe was a patriot. I believe he was a constitutionalist and He was a member of the John Birch Society of John Birch Society and so he had to temper some of those things. As a an apostle he was had to do that but there was a battle that was going on behind closed doors in the church and that battle was over those people that wanted to be true to the Constitution. That wanted to resist. This changing narrative, that was coming. And then there were those that Wanted the changing narrative, they wanted to bring that in, so this battle that's going on inside the church.

29:00 We talked a little bit about that during our last podcast and this battle didn't just affect BYU, it affected the whole idea of schools. Utah is affected by that because you had Seminary programs that were in right ingrained in this part of the school's. When I went to high school I wasn't a member of the church. So I didn't go to Seminary And if you didn't go to Seminary, you were pretty much an outcast or an outsider. You know. That was a, it was a separator from who you were. But at the time, I was in a private school up to eighth grade and then after eighth grade, I was in home school, just at home and then after a couple of years, it was just going nowhere for me. So I told my mom, I want to go back to school and that's how I kind of got to know the school side of the high school side of things.

29:56 When I was a young young man, it blows my mind that I'd never heard of that but it blows my mind that in the 80s. There was actually a letter from the first presidency and said, homeschooling is a sign of apostasy or or can be an indicator of apostasy, right? And it wasn't wasn't that that was specific, it was just a list of things in a lot more that would suggest somebody might be in danger of apostasy. So it didn't say you were an apostate. It didn't say that directly. But sometimes things have unintended consequences, things might be well intended, but they certainly don't come across. And I think one of the not well-intended things was that there was the stigma placed on home school in general, because if you're a homeschooler, you were probably a associating with some fundamentalist group and therefore you are in danger of apostasy because that was the idea that was the mindset behind it.

30:58 But anyway, that kind of leads us to some of the myths about homeschooling. The first myth, is that parents aren't enough that somehow you have to have a teaching degree or that you've got to have some special training or that you have know, something or have gone to enough School yourself. And that's a complete falsehood. Every single parent if they just taught their children, what? They know, that's it even though matter what level School, the you just taught their children, what they know. That's a pretty significant educational loan and then the child can go on after that. So parents know their get. It's a god-given, right? And we don't live in a world that's illiterate.

31:41 Maybe there are some people but not much anymore. So just teaching what you know is enough to be a homeschool parent. Now, don't worry, you don't have to teach him calculus. You don't have to teach them all those kind of things because that's not part of what your curriculum will be for the Most part with your young kids, you just need to teach them how to fill out right out of check, how to measure stuff to put in the laundry and how to, you know, pay attention to taking care of an animal or something. All you have to do is have them write down the steps that they're doing, maybe make a budget. So, there's just an enormous amount of things that you're doing, kind of naturally that you just break it down and let the kids do. And that's enough Enough.

32:27 That's a myth that you don't have enough training to be. Homeschool parent. Yeah, I think that that's one that has been extremely effective. I won't name where I was working at the time or anything like that, but it was right. When we took our kids out of school, and I remember this lady said what what makes you think that you or your wife or qualified to do that. And I was actually really glad she asked the question because it made me really Because I'll be honest. When we jerked our kids out of school.

33:08 I was more pissed off than anything else, right? I was like, we're done. I'm not going to do this and it was one of those things where I hadn't thought it out real well. Russ right. Me and my wife were both pretty hot at that time. And so we were like, yeah, we're you know, when this is over, we're done. But I'm glad that lady asked me that question, you know what, what makes you think that you're qualified? And I stood on that for a couple of days. Right? And I remember and I think I said this in the lab on the last episode that you and I talked The conclusion I got is I settled down and I prayed about it was we're uniquely qualified because those kids are are calling. And if that's the case and we know God, Fills in the gaps and gives inspiration on top of us doing the best we can. We are the most qualified to teach our children because we know them the most and there are responsibilities, there are calm and, and that's what I ended up telling this lady and it didn't make a Mark.

34:17 I mean, she was like, okay, Fundy and then just kind of moved on. But but that was that was that was the thing I got and the more I thought about it, I was like what an Insidious way of getting people. We'll look at it, right? What makes you qualified to teach your kids and and, and it's so it's so Insidious. Well that the next part myth kind of ties a little bit to that and that's the myth that your kids aren't going to have any social interaction and that somehow they need their peers so that they can learn. But the fact is is the worst place. Our children should learn anything as from their peers because their peers are mess.

35:01 It up there trying to figure out life to now. Why would you go take advice from somebody more messed up than you? And so the idea that peers need to be the teachers is a complete falsehood, the the children, our children should be looking to their parents, as their mentors and they should be looking at Family leaders, whether it's a brother or an uncle, or a father grandfather, or somebody that's in a much better place. That should be their Mentor, not not the bully or the buddy. That's the jock or somebody else because That kids over there going through the same stuff and he's not going to be a source of good and true information.

35:44 He's going to be messed up and then get messed up together. So it's a myth that you think you have to have peers to be successful. Now I'm not suggesting that they don't have friends. I'm what I'm suggesting is this idea that you have to have peers in order to succeed in school, that's just not true. So shall I be there? You don't have to I mean we might have a little bit of a unique situation with our homeschool but our kids have an unbelievably wide variety of interactions with other kids because we provide that opportunity we don't go anywhere that we don't have a purpose to reach out.

36:27 Right. That was the other thing I thought. I fought more stigmas and just Wrongheaded thinking when I took my kids out of school than any other time and I remember when we withdrew our kids, that was one of the things they talked about, was that your kids going to be awkward? He won't be able to socialize. Well, they'll be behind when it comes to picking up social cues and they won't fit in with society. That was the one. I remember, she said they won't fit in with society. And I said, well, judging by where Society is right now, your terms are acceptable I'll make sure that they don't, they don't quite fit in, but here's what I found for us, and this is just my own experience.

37:19 Once the kids started doing, they're getting their education at home. That freed up some other things for them like getting jobs, right? Which if you're concerned about your kid, really, you know, getting, you know, not being socially awkward a job, is the perfect place for them to learn that a lot of times because they have to deal with the public most of the time, right? And kid jobs, you gotta learn how to deal with the public. You got to learn how to do, you know, take instructions from a manager, those sorts of Things that has been a way more worth to my kids in the long run than the extra four hours.

38:01 If they were sitting in school, Well, that's a that's a good point. We're going to talk a little bit about that in just a minute but I want to identify the third method or the first two is one, is that the idea you don't have enough that you're not qualified. Number two, is it? They're not going to have social interaction or they'll be somehow because unable to function in the world without their peers and the third myth is that you have to teach all the subjects that you have to have math and history and science and you might as well have a couple of instruments in their two, other practicing and do. All the stuff that is another complete falsehood, you don't have to have all those subjects.

38:41 The most for the most part, when you go through school and you'll probably remember this, you go through the subjects over and over and over again. So you do it because you don't remember, you have a great forgetter installed in your head and you don't remember and so even if you did, take the subject, you're not going to remember it in two years anyway. The concept that we should be focusing on with our kids is the process of learning and the experience of learning not the memorization of wrote facts, not a test to prove that they actually memorize something because that's not learning. That's just memorizing facts. And that's what the school does is try to get you to just memorize to get a test pass to get a good score so that you can get a degree so that you get a better job. And so this is just kind of a cycle that starts out when you're young, and in reality, it's the learning process itself that's important.

39:41 It's the accumulation of knowledge, not facts but the accumulation of knowledge and how it applies in life. So those are the three myths that we have identified. The three biggest, there's lots of other little things. If we get all three of those out of the way, then we can start kind of building our own platform. Our own base of how we should do a Cool, I'm not here to tell you. You got to follow this curriculum or you got to do that thing because like you said, you are the one that is uniquely qualified. What you have to do is number one have confidence that you have that qualification. And number two, you don't have to do it the same way as your neighbor or as some other Guru that's out there telling you the stuff or even the same child, you can have one kid that is going to have a completely different way of learning than another So that's that's the big deal. Get let's get a platform that we can build on. Let's identify the common things that need the I think all home schools ought to have those those Baseline items that says okay if I do these things I'm going to have a long-term successful home school.

40:52 Before we move on from the myths and maybe you're going to cover this later if so, that's great. But how should we're parents respond to that, right? Because it's more than just the the the teacher in the or the principal of the school that they have to answer these questions. To write these questions, you're going to come up at the Thanksgiving dinner table and if you're different from your family on that you're going to you're going to get those same questions, right? Those same three myths or maybe even at church Ouch, right? I mean, yeah. Whatever the case is, is that something that you're going to cover later? Or do we have time to explore that a little bit? We can talk about that a little bit. So, number one, the first thing we talked about is your not enough.

41:42 If you have a scriptural background at all, all you need to do is just go back into the scripture, starting in Genesis, particularly the Joseph Smith translation. That's the one where Joseph received this Revelation in 1830 and he translates the Bible two months after he finishes The Book of Mormon. He's back to work on the Bible so you can read part of that in the book of Moses. So that's in the standard works. The church does not disqualify The Inspired version of the Bible. They have a statement on there. So it's not like you're going to read something. That's fundamentalist your Joseph Smith inspired version is a usable version. You can take it to church just like anything else. It's, it's the Bible. And so the King James version with Joseph's commentary and and the revelations on how It should have been the things that were taken out to why?

42:30 That's important is in the first part of Genesis. When it talks about Adam and Eve and how they taught their children, they were told it, said that they were given a language that was pure and undefiled and that men were inspired to write and to use what they wrote to teach their children. So they actually were, that's the instruction right there. He's parents. Particularly fathers, write a journal. Teach your children from your Journal, how to read and to write and basically that's it's a teach by inspiration. Write down the things that you're inspired, that's the qualification. For the first home, school is good enough for Adam, it ought to be good enough for us.

43:12 Right, that's the first step, that's not the only thing that's the first step. Now, it's important also, to recognize if you pick up Doctrine and Covenants section 68, I think it is. If you read in there, it says that whenever in this is talking about men, getting, you know, receiving this inspiration. When a man is moved upon by the Holy Ghost whatsoever, he receives or writes down his from God. If the mind of God, the will of God, the word of God, okay? In other words, you have the right. Right? To receive your own scripture and that's what you write. That's the inspiration that you write down and that you teach from. So get the confidence to go to the Lord, and receive that inspiration.

43:55 And even if that inspiration is something super simple, write it down and teach from that thing and just follow that, that's important that we get to that point. So that's number one, the authority. Number two, you already hit the point about the myth on peers because like you said, if you want to see what the world is doing, you don't want your kids to be that way. Well that's that's pretty straightforward. I don't want Little Johnny to act like the hoodlum down the street, right? And number three is thinking you've got to teach all the subjects. So what you do is you teach something the kid likes and he gets really good at it and then, when he goes over to Grandma's house or Aunt, Susie's house And he knows these things about the thing that he's so good at that, he overwhelms them with information and data, you know whether that's dinosaurs or whether that's a pufferfish and he knows everything about puffer fish, it doesn't matter. He's going to have this much knowledge. And I even had a son one of my older Sons, who thought my our younger?

44:58 Kids were sentenced, not going to get enough. They were going to be so dumb and they didn't have math. Well, it turns out they're more advanced than most of the kids. Every single time our kids were home schooled when they were sent back to high school every single time in every single class they were put in advanced classes and they didn't have to take that class. In other words they didn't get put in Advanced history because we taught him history. We just taught him how to think and how to the process of how to think and break things down. And so, every single one of our kids that we pulled out and put back in high school went in advanced classes. Got an advanced classes.

45:43 So the proof is just simply in the process of what they're doing. No, I think that's great. I remember you talking about teaching all the subjects. I remember as a surveyor, I had to take some hellacious math classes and people always make the Assumption. Oh you're a surveyor. You must really love math. I'm like I did test math, you know, but I'm blessed to live in a day now where that's a really small part of what I do, and it gets really handled by By the tech right now I have books that have the theorems in them that I can go back and use but yeah, I so I would submit to you and you explain the quadratic equation to me right now. He don't know.

46:36 So but I bet you did it when you're in in your claim your classes, right? Absolutely, I remember, I remember my brain being turned to cap. Eoka sometimes. Certain math equations especially statistics that that really you know that one was really tough. No I can't really happened though. Is that you learn how and your you picked it up it didn't matter how old it didn't matter. If you would have learned that in seventh grade or right, don't even 10th grade, you learned in the moment that you needed it. Yep. And you got through the class and you don't remember it anymore. Nope, we haven't used it since. So, what benefit then is it to Make sure to, for some seventh-grader to learn that quadratic equation, there is none.

47:23 And that's and that's been and see when. And that's part of the thing. When you say that, You all of a sudden get labeled a heretic so to speak. Right, right. Because the reality is, the reality is is that that happens with everything. And so what you do is you teach a child how to respond to his environment, how to think, and then how to go figure out what you need to do. Right? Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So, those are the three myths and I'm glad you kind of gave gay folks out there. Some a she older a little bit of ammo to fire back because sometimes I think that homeschooling has such a bad rap to it that it's often the parents of who I think bear the brunt of it, the most right when they decide they're going to homeschool their kids because And maybe this was just me. But I felt like I constantly had to to justify what I was doing. Well, I think even more than justifying it to the outside world, I think you have to justify it to the man in the mirror and that's the part that's even harder. Especially after you've done it for a few days and you just spin your worn out your frazzled kids, don't do things and there's some things that you should just get to know. We'll talk about that in a minute. But the most important, Person to get on board is the person beside you, your spouse, and the

48:56 person in the mirror, and they're both equally important. Yeah, I'm glad you hit on that because I'll be honest, the first three months. We did it. Russ, I was like, oh, I'm screwed. I screwed this up, right. I screwed this up so bad. I should have kept my tongue. I should I should have bit my tongue. I should have, you know, weaseled my way around some things. Yeah. I felt like a huge failure. I'm not gonna lie and then all of a sudden one day my son. Like brings me into his essentially, his grades to look at and I'm like, oh oh, okay, well good on you right.

49:37 Yeah, I think you're right. I think the guy in the mirror is is pretty critical to sometimes and I have a I have a clue for the guy in the mirror to how to help him. I'll share that with you in just a minute. Alright? Alright. So those are the three myths. Those are the Three myths. So in our experience and our experience is probably different and I understand that there are families of all different types and makeups today. And so this isn't a way of categorizing anybody. It's a way of what we did and how we can best share, and then adapt it to your particular needs. And so because we've had these special needs kids. Hearing impaired, autistic we've had ADHD have 11 of our kids have dyspraxia.

50:24 That means that she Add a little bit of a stroke when because they doctors didn't want her to get born and that meant that she was delayed in Her speech. She's totally fine now. But all of these things contributed to our understanding because we were in the college system, the special school, special, ed been directly involved in curriculum development and teaching teachers. And then finally Even in our home school, and then, because I was working on the universal model for all those years, Ears. When we started when we were homeschooling, Heidi would take the stuff that I was working on and she would adapted into these worksheets and then go teach the kids.

51:06 So she was teaching them out of the universal model mostly because I would have to have her come and read it out loud to me to make sure that it was going to make sense to someone else. And as she would read it out loud she would get the content and think. Oh, that's so cool. I'm going to go teach that to the kids and that's kind of how our work pages got. Together to create the first workbook on the universal model on the volume 1. That's not how the happen, that's cool. But as we began to kind of develop that we started thinking about, we need to have a little bit clearer statement of what we've experienced. What were the most important things? This kind of fundamental thing that we were to say, what's the ABCs of of our family and Define that as what truth Seekers Academy.

51:56 He is what we're about and it's kind of interesting that the number one that we list. The number one thing is dad's got to be involved patriarchal integration. Okay. Now that's kind of a scary thing. Specially dads out there. Busting hump trying to make money. Try to take care of the family. How does he get involved in school and teaching his kids. So the first thing that other people will say and it's partly true is Share your priorities, right? Because if you're going to work two jobs so you can pay for your glamping trailer and your to side-by-sides and your jet skis and your boat, maybe you should think about realigning that, but aside from that, you do that on your own minimum, dad needs to be involved in both the curriculum choice and he has to do something where it's legally involved. Now how that started for me because I was just like everybody else out there just trying to make a buck and I thought my most important Focus was on On the money, but my wise wife always was looking for ways to make sure that I was engaged with the kids.

53:03 And so I would give the kids a report and a subject that they would have to give me a report on that they would turn into me on Thursday, I give it to him Monday. They would give me the rough draft Thursday and then they agree, right after I corrected it on Friday. And so, what happened is that mom spent the time, teaching them all week long dad gets One report that gets all the glory in the week because they want to mostly know what he thought about what they wrote and he gets the credit for doing all the work. So that just kind of is a nice byproduct in case you wanted to know. Yeah, I could see that. I think so often we have this idea that we're going to live some sort of balanced life, right? That our work life is going to balance with our personal life, and if you throw a homeschooling in that mix, then it's, I could only imagine it.

54:04 It's not, I don't have to imagine, it seems overwhelming. One of the things I did with with my boys, especially just because my daughter's didn't want to go out and stand out in the elements. But I took my boys to work with me quite a bit. Yeah, that's a great idea. And I just remember there, I just remember thinking as I was teaching them how to setup a total station or the GPS. I was like this feels natural, this feels natural, this feels real. Right. But I think it's important that you take even though your daughter might not want to do the elements, they need to be with Dad too and they were we found we found other ways to make that work, right? When I would do the cad work or something like that, but but the thing I was going to say is that I don't think there's any such thing as a balanced life or us.

55:02 I've never seen it where everything just balances perfectly, I've given up that idea and went to More of an integrated life. Right through in that integration. I think I you can strike the balance so to speak. Well, I actually love that integration because that's really what it's about is integrating. The principles that are most dear to us into our lives and letting it shape that. And so having data involved should be an important thing and if you know Dad's not around or there's some other alternative that needs to happen, Children need a father figure, so it could be a grandfather, could be an uncle could be somebody, but they need a father figure to represent that part that part of the equation, but to the least, anyway, get Dad's involved.

55:50 Dad's pick up your, you know, your book can just come up with something creative. I would randomly say something about, write me a report on an so give me a report on lightning or something and it was just, they would dive into it and I would make the length of the report different based on the age. The ability of the, of the child. So the, you know, six-year-old, he didn't have to ride along a report as a 16 year old. That's how I got involved. And then, later on, I actually do some of the teaching. Now, I teach my kids a couple things. I one day a week, I say that two hours and I teach them and so that just I enjoy that I found, it's not been easy. But I've learned I've enjoyed my own learning process so the number two thing is integrating family. So not just Dad but family, bring the family together, teach them together.

56:42 It's the idea that we have to teach Little Johnny and Big Johnny and even bigger Susie as completely different that need to bring them together. And here's an interesting fact. If you've ever taught in your church Sunday school or in, Mary something, you'll notice that No matter what you teach you learned more than the people you're teaching. And so if Little Johnny has an opportunity to teach, then he will actually learn more in the act of teaching than he would have if he had just been taught by his bowl over brother sister.

57:23 So it's important to have this integration where responsibilities and roles of teaching get shifted around. And we actually have found that in our case, sometimes the younger kids are smarter than the older ones on some things that they just get quicksand. They know when they're, they're pretty our youngest boy. For example, when we did our first um workbook we got to the end. We're almost for the printer and we haven't done anything on weather and he said, how God we forgot whether. So he went and laid out his own pages on clouds and wrote it up, all the questions that should ask about cumulonimbus and and cumulus and serious clouds. And he was eight. Wow. So you know that that was just our experience but everything, The Young Ones actually are going to have as much opportunity to teach as the older ones and it will bind the family.

58:16 So, that's why that's, that's a number two. Number two, Baseline that we did. so if I can ask just a question here, I think because of the way that public education has been rigged, you use the test as an idea. If they've learned the material, right, learn is a loose word because it implies that it's there forever. When in reality they're just measuring the retention in that one semester. However, I would think at some point you'd want some sort of measuring stick to see how they're coming along, right? well I guess it depends because in some cases I think that's just a false idea of modern the modern education systems thinking that you've got to actually teach to a test Because in reality, what's a, better way to measure your child? Is it because he knows facts or because he knows how to think. Can he work through a problem?

59:25 Can he can, he deal with situational problems between older and younger siblings, you know, how is he able to respond? To me? That's a much better way of measuring ability or success. Right, I thought today's day and age rather than the tests show me how to find the answer. Where do I go to find it right? We should we should do that for sure. That brings up the third foundational pillar for us is subjects are integrated. So in other words rather than teaching history disconnected from English and maths and all these other things try to bring things together, use subjects. So that if you're teaching a subject in the case, we'll talk about our human body book in a moment. Use the human body as the spelling, the English and writing.

1:00:25 Find ways to connect history. So it's, it's a supplementary. It's a subject that you go and Branch out all the things, but you connect them. And as you connect them, you treat the whole subject, which is kind of, like, eating Whole Food, rather than, like, pulling out some piece of it, and just learning about this line, think of the thing as a whole. So integrate your subjects together, so that you're teaching together, rather than having. Okay, now we're doing Singing. Okay. Now we're doing history. And okay. Now we're doing math. Bring them together as much as possible. I mean, math is sometimes just math. That's what it is but there are ways you can bring math into other subjects.

1:01:12 No, I think that makes perfect sense. I and and realistically, if if you've ever read a really good history book or watch your really good documentary, that's how they present it. Right? I mean look we one of my favorite subjects WWII, right. When when Germany goes into invade Russia it's just not the Russian troops. It's the weather that causes Germany, so many issues, right? And I guess if you were teaching World War Two history, it's one way. You could tie in the physical sciences with it. Well not only can you tie the physical sciences and but why not tie that into where Napoleon lost the battle as he invaded Russia. Also some other words, bring back another piece of History connected to that talk about why the French Revolution failed in the right after the American Revolution. Let those two look side-by-side what was different between the American Revolution and what they stood for versus the French Revolution and what they stood for, you know? Go back.

1:02:23 Instead of just memorizing. The idea that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That's a great thing in the morning. To remember that one thing, but aside from just that what else was going on in the world, you know, for example, Columbus came here and he had gone to numerous different benefactors. Try to get money in the king and queen of Spain ended up giving him the money because the seven A hundred year war with the Moors. The is the Islamic people was finally over and they wanted to do some great things for to recognize Christ.

1:03:03 And so was that just coincidence that he happened to be there and that was the right thing. Right? So connect it to scriptures connected to history, other places, so that it's not just the single thing out there. So that would be part of that scriptural integration as well. That's what scripture integration is find a way that everything we do ties into scripture, somehow not just reading scriptures in the morning, you know? But like we talked when he first started here about how do you have confidence as a teacher, what gives you the right to teach? Well, the scriptures say Adam taught his children out of the books that they wrote now you're integrating scriptures into your teaching If you want to talk about science, the human body. We can talk about how the creation by God of the body and all the different things that come together. There's some really cool things that you can talk about that connect scriptures.

1:04:06 Could the body other than just saying God created, you can all, you know it because in Moses 663 it says that all things are made to testify of him, right? Okay. Let's go find it. How does it testify? How do we look at water and see how water itself? Testifies. Well, Christ says that whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst. Okay? That's living water. How does Living Water connect? You know, and so you're using scriptures is kind of a space and it makes it real all the sudden instead of the scriptures. Be that thing that I talked about on Sunday, scriptures become part of my life. And immediately when somebody says something I want to think about what a scripture say how do I convey, how can I tie that together?

1:04:52 That's kind of cool to know this or to know that how does that work? Got, you know, that makes a lot of sense and I see your last Point down, there is consecration. Yeah, that's probably that's the one thing that when we got done. Okay. So you're learning and you're doing all this stuff. Why? What's the purpose of learning in section 93? Joseph Smith receives the Revelation from God and God specifically says, I have commanded you to bring up your children and light and truth and you have not brought your children up and live in truth and for this reason, the enemy has power as yet over you.

1:05:35 Okay, so, and that Revelation was given, not just to Joseph Smith, it was given to Joseph Smith, Oliver cowdery, and Sidney Rigdon. This is the first presidency of view of the church. So there's no higher authority in the church and the Lord is chasing them saying I command you to do this and you haven't. And this has caused the problems in your family. And he says now, yeah, I give you a Commandment that you teach our children light and truth but he doesn't just leave it at that because that's the section where he says, and Truth is knowledge of things as they are. And they were as they are to come. So now we have a definition of what truth is. We're commanded to teach them light and truth, but then later on it goes on to say that truth not only is this knowledge of things but it's also the spirit of God even light.

1:06:24 Hmm, so if you if you just study section, 93 it tells you you're commanded to teach your children, knowledge, that doesn't change the give them light and then the scriptures also say you should not hide your light, not put it under a bushel but put it up on a hill work in signs. Okay, so what light is he talking about? Knowledge. He's talking about the knowledge of the things that you learn, and that you have to share that. So, consecration means you're learning for the purpose of sharing and uplifting other people. Go out and teach. Don't just so this is how we do it in our time, our home real time for the last three years.

1:07:04 Our homeschool has included a minimum of two or three other kids from other families. We don't charge for it this year. We're teaching one who is English. Second Language. She's the sister of one of my sons wives and she was just doing terrible in school and she would just kind of coasting along. He was spectral at home. So we took her on as a homeschool. She comes over three days a week, and she's a part of the home school and and she has unbelievably bloomed and change direction. And then we have to Samoan kids that come over fantastic kids. And so, guess who teaches those kids? The kids kids get assignments to teach them and they teach each other their friends, the same age, but they work together, and they're doing the, and we're actually creating our English book, right?

1:08:01 When we're doing not only English for these kids, but English for this person who's a second language English, right? And so, that's helping to develop the English book that will become part of our curriculum, like giving by giving it out, And that's what we should do. Everything we teach in our home schools, we should be able to export that so our kids ought to have opportunities to go teach what they learn. Absolutely and share the message, share the gospel. Not so much to go proselyte but share the gospel truths. They learn with their friends at church. I'm teaching absolutely.

1:08:42 Maybe this question is too soon and so if we want to shelve this, we can. But as you've made these, these five pillars kind of the the the support structure for for your home school experience with your kids. What has been the outcome would? Have you seen that is different than somebody coming out of public education? I'm not sure how to answer that, because maybe we have an unfair Advantage because our experience has been pretty unique and we've had these all these different opportunities to home-school. Sometimes Junior High sometimes because their special needs, but our youngest three especially have been pretty much directly involved in the creation of the curriculum and then going out and sharing it. In fact, our last two Asians we were in Montana and in Pocatello here about three weeks ago.

1:09:43 And my two kids had to get up and actually do a presentation themselves had to learn how to and their presentation was on how to ask questions. So, you know, that's what they do. They come to be a part of and help us out with the books and at the home, show The Book of Mormon, exponent other shows we do. They teach, they teach at home and they pretty much have friends. Across the country. When we've gone everywhere we've got they end up being involved in all these kids that are kind of coming and so they've, it's been pretty remarkable and especially it's been remarkable because I have a couple of kids that are older.

1:10:27 That went one of them went to BYU and has lost his testimony. And so he's constantly pounding, my one young son about Evolution and he's able to contend with it. Stand his ground and show him things that he's learned, so it's giving them tools and it's given them the ideas. The truth will come when we see how they do when they become parents themselves, right? We don't know yet. That's about it. That's the unknown. One of the things. So when we started homeschooling, I asked around for good examples of homeschooling, this was during that three months, I was telling you. I was feeling like I was screwing it up, right? That me and my wife maybe weren't qualified to do this. And so, I went around, I talked to a couple of different homeschoolers and you kind of hit on this in an indirect way. One of the things that I noticed about all of their kids were, is that they were so well-rounded, and they were so engaged in whatever it was, they were doing. And so, we would ask these parents questions. And I remember this one, one gentleman and I'll forever be thankful for him because he reframed the conversation for me.

1:11:58 He said, stop trying to recreate public education in your home. Just stop because for some reason that was my default go to, right? It's like, okay, we need a certain amount of time for this, this, and this, what I've noticed out of my kids and because they're mine, it's absolutely nothing less than miraculous. But as I've watched my kids who are being homeschooled now compared to the ones who were educated by public education, is that my twins are way more. Well, Grounded, right? And they engage the world in a much different way than, then my for older ones did. And it caused me to sit back for a minute and say, okay, what what was different about this and what I realized is that we put it back on them a little bit, right? We said, okay, here's the things we want you guys to learn, you go look it up and you go learn it. And then come back and let's talk about it. So I make sure that you're getting everything you need. Now, I didn't know about Universal model at that time or anything else, but they engaged much more and that was something that was miraculous.

1:13:25 From my point of view, I'm really great. Glad you brought that up because we kind of skipped a step that I wanted to throw in there. Is once you are in the process of thinking about Homeschooling one of the things we Advocate pretty strongly as soon as you get your kids out of school, the very first thing to do is nothing, don't get them in school. Now I don't want to use the term unschool because the unschool community is kind of this laissez-faire. They never did let the kids just kind of do whatever they want but rather think of D schooling like you were said, you're detoxing while you need to be school and if that means you go for an entire year, so what? That's okay, they're going. Just be able to get around you and hang around and be part of the family.

1:14:08 And that's all right. It's a it's not going to hurt anybody in the long run. If you spend a year doing absolutely nothing, it's not going to make a difference in the long run. And so that's the most important thing to remember is that kids are resilient. There's been a lot of times in the world where things didn't go and they have the skip a whole year and they can catch pick back up. It's not, it's not that hard. They'll be back on that. Well, and, and even this idea of ketchup, Russ, I'm not sure that that's actually even. I'm not sure, that's even a thing, right? I mean, yeah, I would agree. And so, the turn ketchup is probably even a Mist use term. Yeah, I guess.

1:14:53 All I'm really saying is that they're not going to fall. Back into the where they're going to be these dumb people. These idiots that come out of the end and do nothing. No nothing, no. They're going to be fine. No, they're going to be more successful. In fact, because they'll finally have been broken off of that that drug that has, I think modern education is, is a drug and don't recommit, don't recreate the modern education in your and your home. In fact, Be careful about thinking you talk about classical education. Be careful about the books you bring in, right? And the concepts. You need to get that stuff out of your house or at least out of the mainstream.

1:15:39 Not that I'm saying we have to ban all the books but let's not make those Antichrist books. The focus of or the center of our education. Yeah. Yeah. It also the experience I've been having with my twins has also LED Led me to believe that. I think we shortchange our children. A lot by thinking. They're incapable, right? I go back, I go back to what I saw with my twins when I put it back on them after because we shut it down the second time, right? I told you, we had that detox thing and then we re we tried to recreate public education in the home and that didn't, you know, it was better but it wasn't great yet. When we finally said, okay, what do we want to learn about today? You know, this month, we usually go month by month. Let's pick a subject.

1:16:33 And like you said, you kind of incorporate everything into that one subject, history math, physical science, the whole ball of Wax, And we put it kind of back on them, right? Okay, find out what you can about these five subjects within this larger. Usually, it's a historical event, bring it back to us. Let's look at it. They were bringing back stuff that I'll be honest with you, Russ, I was writing in college, right? I mean, I'm like, I could have totally have copied your paper, my sophomore year. I mean, totally we'd have been fine, which leads back to me thinking we've really short changed our kids by thinking that they weren't mature enough to do certain things. And what I figured out and again, I'm slow, so, it took me a while to figure this out, your kids. Will almost always achieve.

1:17:32 The goal that you helped them set. Always the bar that you expect, almost always your kids will meet and if they don't, that's probably on me because I didn't explain it. Well, I look back at Washington whose Fairfax County. Virginia, surveyor at 16 years old, right? That's not that long ago. There's a comedian that says that's like two people ago or three people ago, right? And when he wasn't, he wasn't using a computer and TPS either wasn't no. No. And so I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this, but sometimes I feel like we've just short changed our kids by just assuming that they can't do hard things. I agree.

1:18:16 They can. Yeah. And and I look at my kids now the two that we have homeschooled and I'm like night and day difference night and day. So this is the spread of our life in the human body book and we'll go through. I'll just kind of show you a couple of spread when I Spread its the if you opened it up, that's the two pages side by side. The two Lookout. Okay, so all of our workbooks and we like to think of them as supplementary, we don't necessarily think that this is a whole curriculum that you should do just this. But you can teach what you're teaching at home doing your own thing and then just add this in. As supplementary, add your own math, do whatever you want to do because we know that there's no one way to do this. You're going to probably do something in the next year. You'll do something different.

1:19:08 And so that's kind of our ideas that this is just Hurry as you go along in your school career and if it's right for you then this will work. But we also all. Start everything. Everything starts out with asking questions and teaching kids how to ask questions. So in some variation, all of our workbooks are going to have some spread like this. Is going to teach them how to answer questions and we began this. You actually use this word critical, okay? We've been trained to think that we'd be critical thinkers. I believe that that's a Twist or a counterfeit of what we actually should do because critical the root of critical is to criticize or to tear something apart.

1:19:57 Now, there's some value in that, but I think the most important thing we should do is to be objective in our thinking. So, objecting means asking and asking questions with an open mind the other questioning attitudes like, Uncle or partial are ways of asking questions without being open-minded, including critical. So, I think we have to kind of change our ideology to thinking objectively and asking objectively reviewing that. So I won't go into all the details about these questions, but there is a really big deal to understanding the difference between knowledge and wisdom when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and they partook of the fruit of the tree of what knowledge.

1:20:41 We add the clarifier of Good and Evil, and that kind of takes away the real value as the tree of knowledge, and remember what is truth. Truth is knowledge of things that doesn't change over time. So when they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they were partaking of the fruit of the tree of truth, truth or light or spirit of God. This is a fullness. They were participating in this fullness of Truth, light and knowledge. And the process would bring death but and that's another subject but keep in mind. So our job is to go find knowledge, teach our kids knowledge and then the Lord will actually give us the wisdom questions of how answers division questions of how and why?

1:21:28 And again you can tie that to the scriptures. You can go back to Moses chapter 1 and in it. Moses asked the Lord a question, he says Tell Me Lord how this happened and I'll be happy. And the Lord answers and says here is wisdom and it remaineth in me. So the answers to that question of how is a wisdom question and God did not want to tell him that yet, right? Anyway, so we start with that teaching questions and learning about the laws of wisdom and knowledge and then our workbooks are also Hands-On. So, in this case, we start with them doing a pattern as simple apron pattern because their idea is to learn about the pattern of what God has done before.

1:22:11 This isn't no, you don't have to reinvent it. This is a pattern. All things have a plan. God doesn't do anything that he doesn't have a plan. So the plan, which we To refer to, as a Plan of Salvation, sort of identifies. What God's business is his business is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, right, right? So that business is why he created the Earth. So that's a part of the plan, right? And then he did that by bringing these ingredients. And so they have a make cookies, all of these things are to kind of conceptualize the idea of a pattern plan. And then the ingredients, which says It's the state to learn about DNA.

1:22:54 So now you can dive as deep as you need to and we're not afraid of taking you deep into DNA like right over here. And then, the next thing they do is they actually make DNA, they make the double helix, they make their base pairs out of simple things. And they understand now, The greatest storage system that has ever been discovered on planet Earth is DNA and it helps them to start understanding the science behind why Evolution couldn't have happened, then they build a cell. And so they look at that cell and they build the specific, you know, the parts and pieces of a cell again having his fun or as much as you want and then that comes together and you say okay now is this an accident now that you've seen all of this Design work.

1:23:44 Was an accident. And then you talk about how Circle the items right here that you think were made by accident. See that right there, right? And so you have an important important part as, for parents to just have the discussion, like you said, talk about it. And then let them cool. And then we actually have the we talk about often. How there are two different beliefs you've got modern science. And then you've got um, world history and you talk about, okay? These are the two things. What is Mars Sciences answer about from where did you moons? Come, what is their answer and what is the biblical answer? That is awesome.

1:24:25 Then we also talked about here, for example, we teach them how to read an article. Now, if you read that article, it says, what? Evolutions in a Petri dish, kind of acts like it proves it right, right? But this might be too small for you down here, but it even calls out. It says research that shows, microscopic worms on the verge of speciation produces Evolution provides Evolution with experimental evidence evidence that creation is does Have. So they're calling out creation and seen this article, right? Right. But it says research that shows microscopic worms on the verge of speciation on the verge, how about this right here?

1:25:08 In the lab microscopic worm, C elegans almost evolved. Or here's this one right here, these words have not fully evolved into separate species, novice conceived, but they seem close yeah, it's that's one of those things where I feel like Okay, this is Scientific American right here. December 2007, hmm. Okay, what this is is it's called spot. The not it's an exercise that we teach the kids to go look for things. Like might have could have fraud, no appears to almost inferred. Look for the words. So they pick any article, they want.

1:25:51 They what did they learn? What knots did you find? And then do you disagree or agree with the article explaining? So we're not trying to, we're not Anti sciencing them. We're saying go read it. Objectively see what they're saying? Did you notice anything that were not proven thoughts? Oh, that is so cool because I feel like it really is teaching them how to think, right? Which I think is more important than than anything else and then we go on and talk about there's a lot of stuff like once it is no such thing as coincidence. And so, you know, here's here we are talking about the body book and we're talking about a solar and lunar eclipses.

1:26:31 We're talking about the Earth and human, you know, so you're bringing this stuff together animals can create maze. The things they have their job on. This is to just go name. What animal goes to what creation here. Fill in the blanks. These are all created by animals naturally and then we have them create their own, collage cut out, pictures. Create your own thing. And then we talked about God's most amazing creation. And so, if you'll notice, we didn't go to the babies through the Avenue of sex. We went through to the baby through the Avenue of creation first right though, that we're recognizing what the body is a creation and then we just go through and talk about it and we talked about where does Life Begin.

1:27:21 We don't answer that. We say, these are the things that are going on. Happened this happens, this happens parents is up to you to figure out when life begins, except for you. You know, there's not my job to tell your kids, it's your job. But then even then we talked about, we connect life to the fertility and Kirk culture, which means the how many babies were having. How do we, what's the purpose of having these babies in a community? And then we talk about genetics and what's different, what's so unique? There's no possible way that you could be anything other than you, then we get into the stuff that's genders from a science point of view about why there's only two genders in about the roles of men and women. Oh, Russ, it's so hateful.

1:28:08 Yeah. And see, now that we've kind of gone away. It's not about sex anymore. It's about these are the things that are happening and so we get directly into what the body too. Changes are going on, right? But we focus on the privilege and blessing of becoming a woman and we focus on the in the responsibility of an honor of becoming a man. You know, so it's not about yes, your body is going through these changes but we don't need to sexualize it right to do is turn it back to the family. And so this leads to the family and the different family roles. Hmm. And then we get into what it means, the differences. You know, a lot of times modern science will try to tell us that there's only three percent difference between us and the chimpanzees, what must be all right? And so we we go for a from that point of view, what are the differences?

1:29:03 What are the similarities? And then we compare that, okay? There's similarities in this house to got a dog house and a house and a building. You know what are the similarities there there 93% somewhere? Sure, sure. It doesn't take into account just how Stark the 7% really is and then we talk about things like humans cannot. Okay. Yeah. I'm that other animals can never overcome. Right. Only only man has the ability to overcome those things.

1:29:45 And so, all this is about the difference between conscience responsibility, agency. So that your understanding and you're seeing the things that happen in the animal kingdom vs, Man, which sets up for us to understand the sphere of Life agency. Like for example, when God creates plants have less agency than animals and animals have less Aid due to humans Right. Things are created in your quarter of agency. Yeah and then we have we talked about health so that we're not disparaging or qualifying or disqualifying things like essential oils reflexology acupuncture and we all were trying to do is say okay there's two different people. Some people think this way, something this way, what do you think?

1:30:32 What is your family name? So you're opening the door to have the discussions with your kids about what you think and how you want to do it. And then we have a pretty big deal about anxiety about how to deal with anxiety. And this page is supposed to look for an addict because it's supposed to say, that's what you feel like sometimes. Right. And this is the midpoint in the book and that's where they start creating a body now. So they're going to take this piece of paper, they're going to create an outline of their body and then we're going to get deep into these systems here. Okay?

1:31:13 Okay. This is where you're saying that sometimes we shortchange our kids Well look at the stuff they're going to learn here. They start by creating a nerve bundle. And that nerve bundles and added two bones and they're going to learn about all the different parts of the bones of the spine in that. So you know this is these are young guys who are here, they're 89 years old, they're learning about lumbar thoracic cervical. You know they're going as deep as you need to go. But this is if your child is a little bit younger and this is too much for them, then you're going to focus on this side, you're going to talk about just the simple stuff, right? But you know what, if you've got Ten-year-old the wants to be a nurse. I'm not a tenor, you know, say a 12 13 year old wants to be a nurse.

1:32:00 They've got to learn these things. Are going to have to take and physical physiology, anatomy class, anyway, let him die, let him get into this. Right. So you Well, let me ask you this question here because I love the way. This is all laid out. I love how it builds on top of each other. I love the fact that the scriptures and the gospel are Incorporated. I love the fact that it can be scaled up or down depending on a child's position or maturity level. Is there anyway? And I asked us about the universal model specifically because again, my kids are almost all groan. I have my youngest.

1:32:50 My two, youngest will be 17 and in a couple of months, right? But I worry about my grandkids now is, is there a way that somebody can pick up the universal model and get an Of how its taught by somebody. Well, I have, I don't think I loaded the volume one workbook. That's okay. So this if you'll notice at the top of our workbook pages, it'll say page 6:30 and um, volume 2 So it'll tell you where, in the um, this is coming from here from 626 26, 28.

1:33:37 A lot of this isn't in the, um, because um, only addresses things that are different, right? That are kind of unique, right? We're hoping to write a companion book for this, that will take the, um, material and then fill in the blanks. And have this discussion. This right here is pretty cool. For example, there are three brains and, you know, you have three brains. I did not. I know that there's 21 in the inside, my Dome and then 11 in my gut right. There are actually three and there and it's based on them being neurons neurons cells are brain cells. Okay, are actually in your gut, in your heart, and in your cranial brain and they connect through this vagus nerve right here. So they're connected this nerve connects. And if, if you think of this from a scriptural point of view, remember that idea about how Or more can testify of the truth, right?

1:34:34 So your, your brain can be deceived your cranial brain. You can be, you can smell or see, or hear something that's not right. You can be tricked, your heart can also be deceived but when you have the testimony of these three things, your heart, your gut, and your brain. You can avoid a lot of trouble in your life if you get those three things working in concert, right, right. So let me just pop in a real quick and we'll just give you a quick look at the world geography book. And that one is, again, we start with the same kind of things about these questions. See it just a little bit different layout. Here's the learning process about the questions that describe the Knowledge Questions versus the intangible, so it's just a way of different of looking at it differently. This one, you start by gridding, you learn how to do. You're going to take that picture and transfer to that because you're learning how to grid. Okay.

1:35:39 And then we set the stage for learning by faith and eventually you're going to actually draw this whole Big Grid on a big project board. Okay? So this is kind of shown small here because this folds out in a book, it folds out to two feet wide and you're going to build a big board will show you that in just a minute. But then we start geography in the Garden of Eden. Okay, and we start. Okay, here we are Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were cast out, what tools did, they make to kill the animals to offer. Sacrifice death wasn't in the garden before. So, there were no tools. Why is that important? As we learn about these tools, we learn about where Adam first lived.

1:36:23 Because these tools, these stone tools are left in the record here. They are right here in America, right? So before the flood, we're now showing where Adam lived which leads us to understand more about the arc and then where they landed and how the Earth was divided the Tower of Babel how the three languages, the three pictographic language is developed from the Tower of Babel. This is the Out of Africa Theory, that's in modern science. This is the Noah record and how he describes things. So, you're learning the to two ways of supposed. Migrations of people, learning about how big the Earth is.

1:37:03 Now, how do you map a flat map on a globe? So they actually do a little and you can see, this one is geared more towards a younger age, right? This is atmospheric layers. Oceanic layers, time zones. Seas navigation ancient explorers. Climate. Shortest, longest days of the year. This is all geographies. You can see the depth of all of this stuff that's coming out here, right? It's not just simply where places are, but it's about things that shape those places. Like whether current flow, here's another little simple thing for the younger people and then here's your first map.

1:37:49 This is what that map will look like when you get it. You can see how big that is now, right? The little print out, is the size. That's in their book. And this is the big map that they're going to create. Okay, and this takes the entire semester entire year. I'm going to do so it's not immediate gratification. You're going to take some time and you're going to go through this and add mountain ranges and Peaks and valleys. And at the same time you're going to learn about the mountains in the scriptures like Mount of transfiguration. Where was it? Where was Mount Ararat? Well where's Mount Horeb? And so you have the scriptures up here you match them up and go find it put it on your map. The mountain of the Lord.

1:38:33 Okay, Psalm. So you're combining physical facts with scriptural stories in history. It's cool. Things like Dead Sea. Yeah, I was going to say one of the other things that I loved is the fact that going back to the the one you showed about, you know, the Out of Africa model versus the no account. Well, I like the fact that in all this, that we're seeing on here, you haven't shied away from maybe the opposition's point of view, you confront it head-on. All right here, origin of water. Under the intelligent engineer creation process. And then here's the random Court accretion model. Yeah, right.

1:39:20 So and we're pulling this from space.com and we're pulling this from King James version Genesis, right. So we're just saying, okay, here are the two stories about how this happened and you're just learning this alongside here. The terms that you're going to find in geography, And then water Hydro. Volcanoes water volcano craters. So, and it's fun. It's stuff that the kids love. I'm the one of the great things they do is When we talk about America, we not only talk about the United States. But the Covenant, what makes it important here, right? And what kid doesn't love flags and all they got to do all that.

1:40:01 And then we do Canada and Mexico to. So you're learning about the States and Mexico. Again, you can dive as deep as you want or the provinces in Canada. And then we do a little bit about each country. You pick your own, then we do natural hazards. And so you're going through all those things and it toward the end, this is where here's your poorest countries. And the purpose of understanding that is that we can make a difference. And so the these are the scriptures that tell us about what do we need to do to love our neighbor and how do we make a difference? And so you do a service project, And a service project. And then the very last thing, I'm not sure if this was going to show, this is the very last thing on Earth, Earth Day, April 22nd.

1:40:48 Each year is about how we're supposed to go out and plant trees, clean up, rivers, and do all these things, right, right? So this is the good stuff but it's done for a bad way. This is idolatry right? But God says, let us give man in our image and let's give him Dominion. So dominion over the fish has see follow the The air and over all the cattle. Right? So he's supposed to have dominion and by having Dominion means, he has to do the same things as Earth day, but we're doing it for a different reason. Now, we're doing it as part of the Commandment given to Adam. And so they do the Dominion mandate service project. That's the last thing they do, and then here's their final map. So at the end, they've got a map there and it's got its got all the tundra in the mountain and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and time zones.

1:41:43 And and they've created this, they've made the map themselves and I'm telling you, it makes a huge difference. Oh yeah, our kids. You can ask them. They'll say, you know, they'll say where is this? They'll say? Oh no, that's not there. That's not, that's a Euro it's up there and they'll tell you where the where the different countries are where the different rivers are. So that is so cool. Yeah I know I know I feel like you guys have done just a tremendous job here and and and just not presenting facts as you understand them. But again, going and showing what the opposing view side is, right?

1:42:25 The other thing, I love how you refrained Earth Day, right. One of the things I've often said, is that I feel like the environmental movement kind, Of puts things on its head where you you worship the creation rather than the Creator are exactly right. And and I love how you put that back into its proper context, that's that's just you pendous and you do this with every subject, right? Not just you know, earth science or whatever but every single every single subject. Yeah. And that's the whole thing is, if you understand, Satan can never create. He can only imitate So if you see something that is his fault, then all you need to do is just look at the invitation. What is it imitating?

1:43:14 What is it trying to corrupt or counterfeit? Because the truth is closed by Satan, can never do it, right? And he's always trying to twist it and turn it just a little bit. So I think it's important that our kids know what is being taught in modern schools because most of their peers that they grow up and go to work again. I know these things and if they know them, it's a lot harder to make them feel dumb. When somebody comes at them and they have knowledge of the basic idea of evolution or age of the herbs are Earth Day and they can say well no that's not true. This is and they can talk about both sides that gives them power. Absolutely knowledge is power.

1:43:54 Absolutely, this is laid out so well I'm kind of irritated. I didn't know about this when I jerked, my my twins out of school. But you know the thing is is Dave is there's no get your kids out of school. That was the best thing you could do. You know, we have one of many, good ideas. One of the things that we debated as whether or not we should make this just Christian, or should we dive in and bring in what Joseph Smith? Gave to us in the way of more light and knowledge and ultimately we had to go that way. If we don't honor the Restoration, in the things that we've been given through Joseph Smith, then why what's the point?

1:44:40 So it's pretty critical and that's why we use the inspired version. When we talk about scriptures, most of the time and we also turn back to the revelations that Joseph gives us about things. So Joseph Smith and the standard works of the church. Church or kind of the things we use as our Baseline. When we're comparing this versus that, we try as much as possible to just lay things out so that you can teach your kids and you give them your opinions and your ideas Yeah, totally. You should are qualified. Yeah, I should have saved that question about, you know, an example of teaching it for the, for this part. Because as I look through this, even a guy like me could have figured this out, right?

1:45:28 I mean, this lays out in such an easy way that it's just incredible. Yes, but it's not easy. You can't just go fill it out. It requires thought and you know each of the processes the questions themselves. Are they require that you get it and get in, start digging and you learn about stuff. You got to look it up. It's not just the most important thing though. What's work? The best and all the people. We've talked to that do this is that has brought the kids together and they've had a conversation, you cannot give this workbook and say, okay Johnny go do this and come and tell me when you're finished. It creates an environment where you must engage and that has to be that way.

1:46:08 Dave, because how many people grew up knowing that the earth was formed in water, almost nobody and so you can't just send your, your kids off to know something that you don't even know yourself. You need to know that it's like Earth Day. We hear about it all the time. But how many people know that there is a Dominion mandate? That's exactly correct. That takes away that counterfeit right. Right. And how many there, so many things where we talked about the scriptures about things and how they happen. And yet, here's the science, bring them together and now we know the reason for these things, This is one of my things right here. One of my favorite is less sediment. Have you ever even heard of less sediment? No, modern science has less sediment is left over gravel ground up by the last ice age.

1:47:04 But if you look down here, all the red down here on this map, right? All lusts. And you know, these, these less areas are the greatest bread. It's in all the world everywhere. The major food sources are is where less sediment exist and less is a living sediment. It's a combination of both silica and calcium carbonate, bacteria, Rich stuff. There's no way that it came other than just, by the flood, the universal blood. And so, when, you know, God has fed the world because of the sediment that came out during the flood, And there's no other way to account for how that sediment got there. Wow. it's just Again, I feel every time I talk to you, I feel like I feel like it gets exposed. Just how shortchanged we've been for a lot of years with public education.

1:48:11 Yes, we indeed have. Um, let me ask you this from your own experience for us. What? What are going to be some of the common challenges parents are going to face when they pick up the universal model and they take their kids out of school. Well, the universal model itself is a big book and so it's going to be overwhelming and probably a little bit intimidating. It's 800 pages in volume 1. So I probably would not take your kids out just to teach in the, um, what I would look at is let the, um, be supplemental curriculum. And the reason that we did The Body Book and the geography is those two.

1:48:56 Things seem to be pretty hot topics today. Specially The Body Book and over. What? It's being taught in schools, you know. And and so this this gave us a way to say, okay, here's the science behind behind how you can teach two genders without coming out and making the gender itself be the problem. Okay? And so we didn't come at it like, oh there's only two genders. What we did is scientifically show, this is how they're only two genders and this is why we're not talking about what's in your mind or identify you just it's the science and it's not related to sexuality. Latias, just related to the roles of men and women children, and adults, and all these different phases of life, right?

1:49:39 So we're, it's non-confrontational way of dealing with genders, gotcha. And then, the other thing is in geography, I believe that if we don't give our kids Foundation that the scriptures are true, then when they get and they face things like evolution in even BYU and BYU-Idaho, they're not going to have the strength to be able to say I've got enough over here to stand, right? So we, you know, we want to teach them that Adam was a real person. He really lived and his works and his words were real and we can have confidence that. That story is a true story. That's why we decided that geography was an important thing because it starts at at the Garden of Eden Making the Garden of Eden. A real thing.

1:50:29 Absolutely. Well, dude, I can't tell you how thankful I am for you and your the work you've done not just with universal model, but I feel like your voice is is one of the more important ones that out there. Basically, telling parents that they can do this. it's I usually try to guard my words very carefully, but I'm going to go go a little further out here. I feel like if if we don't start engaging in some of these Alternatives that get our kids back on a sure, footing I fear that in another generation we're going to see that religion is a whole forget, Mormonism, religion, in general. Is going to go the way of Europe in the United States. We already see it and I don't know if you ever watched, you know, Terminator or whatever, but I think we've got to start incorporate getting a little bit comfortable. With this idea of we're training up the resistance in a certain way, right?

1:51:48 Not violently, but training up our kids so that they can stand for these truths. And I feel like your voice here on this stuff is just so so important. I believe there are a lot of voices out there. David, we're one of many, there are people out there that are truth tellers and that they're searching for this. And the people that I have had the chance to be around Dean sessions as the author of the, um, Rod Milgram as the guy that's working, the Heartland model, Hannah Stoddard, with Joe Smith Foundation. I've worked with all three of these people in their organizations and all of the all of them have a paste. Add and I think it's really Important that we we start bringing and giving our good take back our kid. Excuse me, take back our kids.

1:52:37 And take them back and teach them that the scriptures are true. Joseph Smith is a prophet Jesus Christ, is our savior and then teach around that and if it doesn't teach those things, don't teach it. Now that doesn't mean you can't teach geography, but you can teach geography that affirms scriptures in the firm's Christ and affirms Joseph Smith. And you can teach about the body, you can teach math, you can teach English But those things need to always, come back to those fundamental questions that we're constantly reinforcing and answering or you're right. We're going to lose the Next Generation more than 72% of all. Millennials are already leaving the church. Anyway, the Next Generation, if we don't change its going to be in the 90s, we've got to take back our kids home, teach them the truth.

1:53:27 Hold on a second 72%. Are leaving the Elias church today. 72 percent of Millennials are leaving all Christian churches who because the millennial generation has more faith in science than they do in the word of God. Because we failed to tell them the things they need to know the truth of the word of God. So instead of just talking about we keep letting him go learn about how cool science is but we think that the Bible is myth, And I'm just about finished with a book, I wrote on water I'm probably about maybe another two weeks away and I'm going to try to get it out and published it's going to be just a little. My idea is to create bite-sized readable stuff, you know, of 100 150 pages.

1:54:19 So you can kind of put it in your pocket and read it as you go. But it's going to talk about how water forms the most important part of the earth, meaning the creation, and how it's this whole walk of water all the way through. All the major events that happened, the creation, the fall, the flood The Exodus, the restoration of the Gospel America coming to America water plays an integral role in all of those things. And so I can't wait to get that done. I want to share that information so that our kids can go. Oh my gosh. This is true that look at all these cool science that we can do that. We can look at, we can explain and understand I'm excited to get that out. Yeah.

1:55:04 That's going to be do me a favor. When that book is out, give me a call. I want to have you back on to talk about the book a little bit. Okay, good. Because I would be be fascinating hearing about that. Real quick. What do you think will be? As you've seen people, teach this now. How long is the universal model been out? Russ, the book printing came out and interesting date is the first day, it was delivered to the world. Was April 6, 2017, and that was literally, it came into my warehouse, we loaded up, we quit drove up to Salt Lake.

1:55:48 The first day of the conference was April 6th. And so the universal model April 6, 2017, two years later in 2019 is when Vol 2 came out and volume. It's also the same time that the first work book came out in 2019 and then actually write the beginning of 2020 is when the second work booking um Volume 2. So our homeschool curriculum based on the um as actually that we've started making Get public, just poets your since 2020. Okay, beginning of 2020. So we add look what kind of feedback you hearing from people who are using it? Most of the time it's it goes something like this. You get a call, they're really excited. They pick it up.

1:56:40 They go home. They call back a few weeks later and talk about and say, okay, this is different than I ever expected. I was thinking you're just going to go, you know, just like a normal work book, but What we found is that it has created opportunities of conversation on our whole family, we talk about things and I've noticed this one actually gal called us just a couple weeks ago. She said I was used to immediate gratification where I would take those pages I would grade them and the kids and get their grade right away. This doesn't do that. This focus is on the long haul, this actually goes through the process of you're doing these things that you're going to see the reward at the end of the semester rather.

1:57:21 Rather than just this week, right? So those are two things that we found that our positive is that it's causing conversation. It's bringing people together. We know a lot of people don't do the whole book, they do some and then they don't do other. Some people don't do the project, some people do, but it's creating conversation and almost everybody that's engaged in. It has said, whatever it is. We're doing the next one too. Because it's so different. It's different than any other workbook because it's not just a fill in the blank. It is truly. It's both sides teaching how to think and it's engaging families. So, do you guys have any plans to keep this updated?

1:58:04 Right. I mean, as new things come along, or you guys. Discover something else, is that part of the part of the plan? Are you talking about Universal model or the workbooks both? Well, our workbooks work on. We actually have an English workbook that's getting close. That's going to be based on our English is based on the standard work. So this one will be on the new Matt, it'll be based on the inspired version of the New Testament, to all the English, and because it's New Testament, it will have Greek and Latin root words and discussions because during the New Testament times English and Latin where the common languages of the time, the Old Testament, one will deal with ancient Hebrew and other Sumerian type older languages and then in the Book of Mormon will deal with Old English and the kind of language is that would have Potentially affected the Nephites and where the Nephites might have gone and, you know, and we will have a discussion about Nephites and where they went. So in other words, its history, its science, its English, it's all of that brought together under one, one thing, but it'll be English, and then Heidi's also getting close on a history book, American history.

1:59:26 So that's where I was going next. If you guys did anything like Civics, right? One of the things I feel like especially Guys, who are like my oldest son's age mid-20s? I know. See they weren't taking Civics anymore, right? How government is supposed to operate. What the design was. You guys have stuff in there on that? Well, we actually part of our homeschool is every election year. We had a kind of a module where, for the first half of the year was focused entirely on government in the process of government. And part of other requirement, is our kids had to go find somebody who has both Democrat and Republican interview them. And defend both sides.

2:00:16 And so that was something that they did. But after Trump, and after the way, things changed with the election with Clinton, I mean Clinton, but Biden. Something shifted, and I think a lot of people kind of felt that shift. And I'm not really sure. We just kind of felt like it's not time to teach government anymore because the kind of things that are going on are no longer government. Spaghetti and robbers have taken over, so maybe that will come back up. But we've decided to put that far enough down the list, that it's not even on the radar right now.

2:00:59 Got you, we want to focus on English and history. And then we're also creating these little bite-sized books are Pocket Guide Series where we can kind of put information out on quick read stuff things that are They're pretty plain in the scriptures. Once you read them, you can't unsee them right. But so few people see them like understanding the nature of water and how important it is when the earth is created in water. And how do we know that the Rocks actually testifying that? You can take your kids out, you can do an experiment, show them how water is in rocks and right there in Orem, I can tell you, go leeside, go pick some Mountain rocks, up from some granite rocks, or some and do an experiment, and I and you Apply.

2:01:45 Now, there's water in that rock. You can test it. You can you might not be able to collect it, but you can test it. And if you can get kids to think that way, that's the kind of science that's going to unlock water in rock. Got you now, we know Waters in rock when Moses had two experiences when he was on The Exodus about the first one was at Horeb when he stood on the Rock and struck the Rock and water flowed out, right? Well there was another place to he actually twice struck w. A rock and water came out. So what? Let me ask you this what what's the plan for the universal model?

2:02:29 Say 10 or 20 years down the road? Do you foresee many changes happening to it? What's something you guys are looking at or you feel like, you know what we're done? Because it's no, no actually worked on this actually over. Yeah. Volume 3 has not been published yet. It's probably about half done. Dean's been working on getting his barn, built back up, so we can get back into doing some experimentation. Hopefully that's going to happen here, pretty soon. So he can get back in. We can get volume 3 published because that has a lot of physics in it. Things about weight length time, light star star light on cosmology doesn't, there's a like, amazing things that are coming.

2:03:17 That are going to blow the doors off the physics side of the world. And of thinking, I'm pretty excited because I've seen some of the stuff I've been involved in some of the experiments, it's just fantastic stuff. And how are you? And maybe it's too soon to ask this question because it's only only really been out what five maybe six years now. But do we have any feedback on how kids are doing? Once they go into higher education, like college, or whatever, after having exposure, to the universal model, The only exposure I've had the vadas but along the way I would go teach a local private school here once a year. Just give a kind of an overview of what the universal model is. I've had kids that have gone on and they've gone in this college and called back, and that one single presentation intrigued them so much that they reached out to find out if the book had even been printed because they wanted to get the book. And so, but whether or not that's helped somebody that's in college, I don't know.

2:04:25 There's a lot of people, a lot of younger people that have stood up and and said we're not going to go down the road of evolution and billions of years old Earth and part of those have been because the UN has given him that Foundation, there are some of those, I don't know that they've taken the um into college. There is one college that uses at Monticello College by Shannon Brooks. Their primary campuses in Monticello Utah, but they are opening one up in, in Idaho and it's one of their required readings is the universal model. Wow, little by little, And have you see you said you've given presentation at private schools on this. Do you know of any private schools are using the universal model?

2:05:14 Yeah there's a there are a few that use that as a supplemental curriculum for sure and Montana Idaho. So they are there some using that. Okay, so when in these are just questions, I have from the crap practical standpoint. Point. So when your child's done with their K through 12 education, then is this going to satisfy most state requirements for a diploma? Well, that's why we think of it as kind as a supplemental because it doesn't have all the pieces that you need to have a full-grown, okay?

2:05:55 A curriculum, like doesn't have math. So, you know, and so it's not been a fully accredited system. But what we have done with a lot of the people that are Homeschool anyway, is that if they need some kind of a document, a lot of states don't require that, but if they need something, then you can go online. And there are ways that you can do certain things. Like one of my kids graduated last year and she needed a diploma so that she could get into an advanced program. She wants to be a midwife which means she has to become a nurse. And so she had to have a diploma. Emma to be able to get into the nursing program.

2:06:38 And so she went online and it took her about six months to go through the entire the entire thing class load to get her diploma 6 months for the whole High School. Wow. The so it's there's a lot of there's ways around for sure. You have to be creative but there's ways. That's awesome. All right. Well, Russ is there anything? We didn't cover that you want to get to? Yeah, I just would ask people to reach out. They have questions, reach out to us at true Seekers Foundation. You can call me on my cell if you want. I'll be glad to talk to anybody that number 702 492 hundred, and if you want go to our website through Seekers Foundation sign up for our email so that we can send out when we get the new books out or when we have this information. Nation that we can share it.

2:07:32 Just engage whatever you do. Take back your kids. Absolutely. Absolutely. I like I said, I feel like we're entering a time now rests where as I don't know, maybe the best word is traditional Americans, right? Traditional members of the LDS church or fundamentalist whoever you are. I think we're at a point now to where we're going to have to start thinking outside the box when it comes to things like education. Even maybe it was like college and commerce, we're going to have to start getting a little more resourceful on how we get these things done.

2:08:13 Because if we leave it up to the current structure that exists as is, they will produce a child that It's so unlike their parents. That it's horrifying, it's horrifying. What? We need to recognize who the real enemy is. It's not somebody that thinks a little bit different doctrinally than us. It's not some different sect or, you know, some Christian that's not in our same camp, that's not the enemy. The enemy is the one who's trying to take all of our children. Yep, yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and the reason I feel like your voice is so important on this and I know you said you're just one of many, but I do think it's important is that you've at least given people a path to the Lifeboat so to speak because I just I think of the the normal The normal parent and it's just, you know, it's tough, right? You got to balance work and and stuff and now you're going to talk about education.

2:09:26 And I like what you said earlier, we're going to have to start putting first things first, right? Start prioritizing really heavily because I think we're in a time where it calls for it. So, Right. But dude, well, David's been a blast. You know, how are you? I always love talking to you, man. It's so great. And, and the more I see of this, the just, the more fired up, I get and I haven't told my kids this yet, but I think I know what I'm getting them for Christmas next year. Even an early Christmas present. I think they're going to get get this and all I'm sure. They'll be calling you like, hey, my, my old man whose nuts told me to give you a call.

2:10:09 Arrest. What's this? What, Certainly can. But anyway, dude, it's always awesome. I love it. Let's do this again sooner than later. All right, yep. Well do awesome. Great for us. Thanks man. I appreciate your time. Oh, thank you. All right by everybody here. Listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast. Oh, thank you. All right by everybody here. Listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast.