I'm writing a book!
I’ve known for years that it’s my doom to write a bunch of books. I am so excited that this gets to be my first one! Its goal: make Egan education a live option for homeschoolers.
Imaginary Interlocutor: Sigh… I’m not a homeschooler.
Cheer up! I think it’ll be useful for a lot of people (see “Who’s this book for?” below), and its ultimate purpose is to prepare the ground for a K–12 Egan curriculum that can be used by schools.
I’m choosing homeschooling because
It’s easier to change homeschooling than classrooms
I work with a lot of homeschoolers
I’m a homeschooling dad!
And I’m working on a Kickstarter. Originally, I was going to launch it (and start accepting donations) in the next couple weeks; after talking it through with some people, I think the even better option is to have the fund-collecting part start in the spring of 2025 (closer to the August 2025 publishing date). That’ll allow us to spread word of it further.
In any case, I’ve never done this before. Would you be willing to help?
I.I.: How can I help?
I can think of four ways, right now.
1. Edit me!
Below, I’ll paste the text I have in my draft on Kickstarter. In the comments, tell me any ways you think it could be improved. (Kickstarter doesn’t allow footnotes, so any footnotes you see are my own comments on the text.) Suggest improvements to the words, the overall message, the images, the timeline I’ve just mentioned, choices I’m making in the whole project, whatever.
2. Ask questions
After you read it, please ask me questions. (Probably this is all as clear as mud.)
3. Consider writing a quote
I’m writing this book because I’m convinced that making a full Egan curriculum is one of the biggest things the world needs, because this type of education actually works — in a way that others don’t.
Easy to say, hard to sound convincing.
To sound convincing to people who’ve not heard of this type of education before,1 it’ll need testimonials from other folks who’ve tried some of this stuff before. Could that be you? If you’ve tried any of the patterns I’ve shared on this substack (or have put Egan’s stuff into practice in any way), would you consider sitting down for three minutes to see if you can write a quote we can use on the Kickstarter?
Imaginary Interlocutor: What should be in such a quote?
A great quote should address something you struggled with (for yourself, your kids, or students), what you did, and how it worked. It should be written to excite strangers into taking this approach seriously — but it should also be entirely truthful.
4. Tell me how you’ve done this
If you’ve used Kickstarter to self-publish a book… could I talk with you? Reach out to me in the comments, or via Substack’s messaging.
(Thanks to
and for being so wonderfully giving of your time to help me navigate Kickstarter!)Embark: A Homeschooling Handbook for Egan Education
A homeschooler’s guide for setting out on a real intellectual adventure with your kids (years 1–4)
Learning can be joyous — so why is homeschooling so hard?
Our kids can be bored, distracted, and downright obstreperous. Why, they ask, do they need to learn the causes of the Industrial Revolution, or how to subtract fractions, or the difference between “reflection” and “refraction”, or the definition of words like “obstreperous”? What’s the point of all this?
And let’s be honest: sometimes we wonder this too! Math, history, literature, science… Without a clear vision of how this academic stuff builds to something bigger, it can be hard to maintain our homeschooling mojo.
We don’t plan for it to be this way. We know that education can matter deep down to our bones. We know it because we’ve experienced it ourselves — it’s why we chose homeschooling! And we work danged hard at this. We read books, watch videos, go to conferences. We collect ideas from lots of people, and customize it to fit our kids… and still we struggle.2
What’s missing?
What if all the different homeschooling philosophies were missing something big? What if there’s a natural way to connect our kids’ emotions to academics? What if there’s a simple way to help them taste real history, real math, real literature… and find them satisfying?
This handbook will help you help your kids set out on a very real intellectual adventure: one that engages the senses, provokes the imagination, cultivates critical thinking, and triggers awe, even as it probes the biggest ideas in the world. It’s a journey that uses the academic disciplines as tools to explore the extremes of reality.
And it’s a quest you can join yourself.
Two ideas
There’ve been two great ideas about education… and in the 1990s, Kieran Egan introduced a third.
The first idea is to fill kids’ minds with the greatest information ever. We call people who follow this “educational traditionalists” — in homeschooling, think of the classical ed folk and “Tiger moms”.
The second idea is to set kids free from the past, and help them learn what they find valuable now. We call these folk “educational progressivists” — in homeschooling, think unschoolers and the project-based learning people.
The war between these two camps has lasted more than a century. As a person who’s taught at both extremes, I can say: they’re both wonderful, but come with fundamental problems:
[Here will go a video which I’ve already shot, but which awaits editing. It lays out the differences between the Traditionalist & Progressivist approaches to education; its goal is to establish that I know what I’m talking about. If you want to see the script, take a look here.]
Most parents combine these together, and when that succeeds, it’s wonderful! But oof is it hard. The ideas usually pull against each other… which is part of what makes homeschooling such a challenge.
A third way
In 1991 Kieran Egan became the third person ever to win the Grawemeyer Award in Education — education’s version of a Nobel Prize. Born in Ireland and schooled in England, he got his PhD in America and became a professor in Canada.3 In 1997, he put together his paradigm into a book: The Educated Mind. The book weaves together cognitive psychology, evolutionary history, anthropology, and cultural history. It tells a new big history of humanity that makes sense of how education has worked in the past, and how we might make it work now.
Since then, it’s been translated in multiple languages, and people around the world have asked in one voice: huh?
The truth is that Egan’s ideas are hard to put simply. And while he did take some steps to explaining how to use his paradigm (the best might be An Imaginative Approach to Teaching), his respect for teachers’ autonomy made him hesitant to develop specific guides for teaching.
This is a tragedy! His approach is so powerful — and is exactly what so many people are looking for. This book will lay out simple practices that you can do at home to harness the power of wonder and the tools of metaphors, images, riddles, and stories… all to re-humanize and re-enchant everything your kids learn.
Homeschooling will always be hard; but what we do can mean more.
Who’s this book for?
Most directly, parents who homeschool kids in grades 1–4.
If this were a normal kind of education, it would stop there — but Egan education packs in profound intellectual experiences from the start, delivering more content that matters in elementary school than many of us got in high school. Thus, parents who homeschool older kids can add these practices into their work without much modification.
Because these practices are specially designed to be easy and simple, parents who don’t homeschool will find many of them useful, too, as will classroom teachers looking to enrich their curriculum with deeper, more meaningful content.
Phew! That’s it, though, right?
Ha! The truth is, everyone who helps kids learn stuff that matters will be able to borrow practices from the book:
grandparents who want to play a bigger role their grandkids’ growth
tutors looking for new methods to engage students in math, reading, and writing
librarians who want to help kids fall in love with books
special ed professionals searching for more inclusive strategies
curriculum developers interested in making their stuff emotionally matter
Q: But who’s this book ESPECIALLY for?
If you’re a “third way” homeschooler — someone who’s drawn to Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilia, or Charlotte Mason, or who just pulls eclectically from educational traditionalism and educational progressivism — you’ll find the book fuel for your mind’s fire.
Finally, the way I develop Egan’s thinking often works well for families of neurodiverse kids, especially those who are ADHD, on the autism spectrum, or gifted. Or all of the above! (But I’m a geeky dad with ADHD — I would say that.) Insofar as any of those describe you or your kids, you might find this book scratches an existential itch.4
Who am I?
I’m the founder of Science is WEIRD, which exists to create the world’s first cumulative, vividly intellectual science curriculum for kids ages 8 to 15. I spend most of my week thinking hard about physics, chemistry, biology, and geology.
But before I moved to science, I spent 15 years developing an, ah, “eclectic” background. I taught literature to middle schoolers. I taught world religions, history, art, the psychology of happiness, and the philosophy of evil to high schoolers. I ran philosophy seminars for gifted/talented kids, and taught worldviews to college students. I taught at a hippie school and ran a test-prep company where I coached ADHD students weaponize their attention and memory to attack math, reading, and writing problems. I worked as the curriculum architect of a start-up elementary school.
Q: That’s… a lot.
I mean, I also taught the Bible to preschoolers, and I think I taught a course on feminism at some point? Life moves pretty fast, and I'm probably forgetting things. (I should have kept better notes!)
But more to the point, I’m a homeschooling dad of an autistic 14-year-old, and ADHD 11-year-old, and a breathtakingly loud, semi-feral 18-month old. I have a master’s in educational leadership from the University of Washington, and spent years falling in and out of love with different educational philosophies before discovering Egan’s paradigm, which I’ve now been practicing for more than a decade.
I publish a newsletter ("The Lost Tools of Learning") about Egan’s ideas, and last year I wrote a review of The Educated Mind that won the Astral Codex Ten book review contest, which has helped put Egan back into the educational discussion.
A (rough) table of contents
Chapter 1: What’s missing in education?
Chapter 2: Education’s two greatest ideas… and a third
Chapter 3: What are these “kids” we’re talking about?
Chapter 4: History: re-humanizing the world
Chapter 5: Geography: understanding the global stage
Chapter 6: Life science: finding family everywhere
Chapter 7: Physical science: re-enchanting reality
Chapter 8: Arithmetic: learning to live in numbers
Chapter 9: Problem-solving: savoring uncertainty
Chapter 10: Phonics: the code that changed the world
Chapter 11: Vocabulary: words, words, words
Chapter 12: Sentences: enjoying elegance
Chapter 13: Stories: the original virtual reality
Chapter 14: Other languages: [not sure of a cool subtitle yet, alas]
Chapter 15: Senses: immersing yourself in the world
Chapter 16: Gym: how to be a mammal
Chapter 17: Doodling & Noodling: the roots of creativity
Chapter 18: Handwriting: an elegant weapon for a more civilized age
Chapter 19: Practical life skills: living inside the machine of your house
Chapter 20: Fears: living boldly in a scary world
Chapter 21: Memory: passing messages to your future self
Chapter 22: Conversation: enjoying the dinner table for all it’s worth
Chapter 23: World religions: poking the edges of the universe
Chapter 24: Philosophy: tackling the biggest questions
Perk: Join the Skeleton Army
[Note: I’m thinking about taking this out of the Kickstarter, and just offering it as a stand-alone thing. I plan to post about this next Sunday.]
Want to get an early seat at the table — and help shape this new approach to homeschooling?
Nothing truly wonderful can ever be engineered, it can only be evolved. For these practices to work smoothly, they need to have been tested, critiqued, and tweaked many times with many kids. Some already have been — but some are new.
For the 2024–25 school year, we’re going to form an online community of families who want to test out Egan education. In early September I’ll send out a “skeleton” to them: a PDF with outlines of all the practices in all the subjects. The online community will be a place to ask questions, suggest crazy notions, share frustrations and exultations. I’ll regularly post updated PDFs of each chapter… and from this will emerge the book!(They’ll help me “put flesh on the bones” of the plan. Skeleton army! Get it?)
Wanna be a part of it? Supporters at the $100 tier will get a free ticket.
(Warning: online conversations about education famously can run hot; I run a tight ship, and we’ll have some guidelines to keep the community wonderful. I might suspend people’s right to post when they break the norms.)
Perk: "Eganize My Project"
Egan’s paradigm promises a revolution in more than homeschooling — it shows how to help anyone learn anything.
Do you have a curriculum you need to design? A course to revamp? A speech you need to give? Are you developing an app to enhance learning? Writing a book on educational strategies? Curating an exhibit at a museum or zoo that needs to catch people’s imaginations? Or perhaps you’re planning something entirely different?
For a truly obscene amount of money, I'll help you use Egan’s paradigm to power cognition with emotion, and create something that the world has never before seen. We'll meet in eight 60-minute Zoom meetings, to be scheduled over 2–8 months.
Risks and challenges
Though I've written some long things before (my book review of The Educated Mind was more than 90 pages long) this'll actually be the first time I've published a book. There's some chance that the formatting or whatever will delay the release date of August 2025. If that's the case, I'll send out a PDF of the newest version to everyone who asks, so they can use it for homeschooling in the 2025–26 school year.
Questions and answers
Q: Can I use this to homeschool this coming school year (2024–2025)?
Yes — if you join the “Skeleton Army” online community, where you’ll receive a bones-only draft of these homeschooling practices in early September. (Note: if you’re new to homeschooling, you might not want to lean entirely on these while they’re still in draft form.)
Q: Will you provide updates between the early-September “skeleton” guide and the final guide next summer?
Yup. I plan to release updates as we refine the practices together in the online community.
Q: Will the book suggest specific resources to use?
Yes — and this is one of the spots I most hope to get help with from the “Skeleton Army”. (When it comes to great books and websites to recommend, some homeschooling parents are like Hermione’s magic bag.)
Q: I have middle/high schoolers; can this work for them?
Yes, it can! While the primary focus is on younger grades, the practices are adaptable for kids and adults of any age.
Q: Is this for secular homeschoolers or religious ones?
Yes! I’ve been on both sides of this divide, and work hard to make all my stuff radically inclusive. (For a taste of this, see “Our Beliefs” and “Reasons to Hate Us” at Science is WEIRD.) Families on both sides will find much that they can use… especially in the chapters on “world religions” and “philosophy”.
Q: Can I use this for my preschooler?
Some of it! You’ll be able to introduce other practices in it gradually, as your kid grows.
Q: Can this guidebook be integrated with other homeschooling curriculums?
You betcha. The practices in this book can be taken one by one, or all at once. (You might even find yourself using the paradigm to improve pre-existing curriculums.)
Q: What if I don’t homeschool? Is this even worth checking out? I’m busy and such.
If you’re reading this far, then, yeah, probably! All parents teach — as do aunts and uncles and folks whose friends have kids. Egan’s approach is powerful even for more casual situations.
Q: I’m an elementary school teacher. Could this help my teaching?
Ho boy, yes. I developed a bunch of these while co-teaching an elementary school class with my wife. You’ll find it a cinch to re-adapt some of these practices for the classroom.
Q: What if I’m already practicing Egan-based homeschooling? Will this be useful for me?
First of all, WHO ARE YOU AND CAN WE BE FRIENDS? Egan's approach opens up the whole world to young kids, so I bet there'll be quite a lot of new ideas in here for you. (And consider joining our "Skeleton Army" to help shape the final product.)
Q: I’ve been following your blog — will this just be a repeat of what’s on there?
Nope. While there will be overlap, this will go wider, deeper, and be more specific. We’ll get down to brass tacks (like “what could our schedule be?” and “what books should I use?”). I’ll also be sketching out a new way to make sense of Egan than I’ve yet shared on the blog. There’ll also be quite a few brand-new practices that haven’t appeared there yet.
Q: What if I want to join the Skeleton Army first to see if I like what you’re dishing out. Is there an option to do that and buy the book later?
Yes — I’ll be sharing information on how to do that on my blog at some point.
Q: Are there plans for a hardback edition?
Goodness, no — we’re too busy for that!
Q: How about a sequel?
We’ve got two in the works: Egan @ Home: Years 5–8, and Egan @ Home: Years 9–12. (We'll come up with cool titles later.)
Reward tiers
$10: Ebook
Get an ebook version.
$30: Paperback
Get a paperback copy of the book. (We'll throw in a copy of the ebook, too — just 'cuz that could be useful.)
$60: Paperback + blog
Get a paperback version of the book, PLUS a 3-month gift subscription to my blog, The Lost Tools of Learning (losttools.substack.com).
$100: Paperback + Skeleton Army
Get a free ticket into the “skeleton army” online community, where you’ll get to try out these practices this year, help me improve them, and become friends with other people doing this. Plus, get a paperback version of the book. (See the Q&A for details.)5
$400: Paperback + Science class
Get a free subscription to Year 1 of my Science is WEIRD Big Course recordings (street value: $400). Plus, get a paperback version of the book.6
$5,000: Paperback + Eganize My Project
Get 8 hour-long “Eganize My Project” meetings to help you craft something that’s useful for you. (See above for details.) And we'll throw in a copy of the paperback, too.
I don’t only want to appeal to folks who are immersed in Egan. I’m led to understand that there’s a type of person who just surfs Kickstarter to give money; I’d like to appeal to them, too.
The little line art below (and the similar ones to follow) were made by me; I’ll have Skylar make something more attractive.
Christopher has suggested that I cut out the biographical info of Egan; I think I’m more likely to trust a bold new take on education if I know something of where it comes from. Feel free to weigh in on this in the comments.
Possibly I should make a bigger deal of working with neurodiverse kids?
Once again, I’m planning to remove this one, and offer it separately. This will allow me to offer it soon, and have the Kickstarter run later — in spring 2025.
Luc suggests that we should have a tier in between the top two. I’m thinking “$1,000: I’ll mention you in the acknowledgments, and tell you a new, cool fact about your favorite animal.”
For god's sake, YOU MUST CHANGE THE SUBTITLE! Calling it "years 1-4" leads any normal viewer to think you mean it's for 1-year-olds to 4-year-olds. It wasn't until halfway down your post that I saw you meant *grades* 1-4. You absolutely, without a doubt, must change it. "Grades 1-4" would be fine, or something else if you don't want to reinforce the grade level system. But "years 1-4" cannot be the subtitle if you want your audience to understand what you're offering.
Ok, three notes, one minor, one bigger, one about Kickstarter broadly:
1) is the Eganize my Project art AI? Using AI art, esp on a paid project, is a dealbreaker for a subset of KS backers.
2) it feels like the tone of your initial pitch is to frustrated homeschoolers, but I’m wondering if that’s your target audience or if it’s proficient homeschoolers who want to get more under the hood/customize. If someone *doesn’t* feel stymied, the initial pitch may be telling them it’s not for them.
Either way, definitely a help to have a sample lesson for download to see what you think.
3) finally there are two very different approaches to KS goal setting. You can set your *real* goal or a much much lower one with the goal of building momentum by clearing it quickly and then adding stretch goals to summit (all on the way to your real target). The latter is common in rpg kickstarters, where people want to join a popular and successful project.