Giving Kids a ‘Shield and Sword’ for the Current Intellectual Battle: Author Connor Boyack

Connor Boyack is the founder of the Libertas Institute and author of the Tuttle Twins children’s books, which have sold 4 million copies. He recently released “America’s History,” a new Tuttle Twins story-based textbook to counter the “superficial history” taught by today’s social studies textbooks.

Boyack’s goal is to empower parents to equip their children with intellectual tools to evaluate ideas: to recognize ideas that are based on truth, on goodness, and that will help society flourish.

Today’s parents need to “give our kids a shield and a sword before we send them out into the intellectual battlefield, give them a foundation of these ideas,” Boyack said in an Aug. 27 interview with EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program. With that foundation, “when they’re listening to their teacher, or reading a textbook, or looking at TikTok, or wherever they’re consuming information, they can evaluate those ideas, rather than just absorb them like a sponge.”

During the pandemic, remote computer-based learning revealed exactly what children were learning. Many parents began to feel they had placed too much trust in schools and in history textbooks that may not teach students how to properly evaluate and understand historical events.

Boyack wants parents to take the lead in deciding what their children learn, whatever curriculum they decide to use. “For me, this is a mission in engaging parents to wake up and take charge of the education of their children, rather than delegating it to someone else.”

Beyond Names and Dates

Speaking with American Thought Leaders host Jan Jekielek, Boyack said his history book aims to help parents feel confident about teaching their children U.S. history.

“I think we have a generational handicap in a sense, where the schools for so long have been teaching this dumbed down civic illiteracy that they’ve been conveying to kids. And now

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