What progress have you made since your last update?
I'm delighted to say that the Egan education book is underway. With your (ridiculously generous) support, I took off June last summer to scope out the book — picking the specific practices to go in it, and figuring out how to order them in a way that would both be practical, and gradually unveil the big vision of this approach. IT'S LOOKING PRETTY COOL.
Then, I started our "Skeleton Army" — 60 homeschooling families around the world who are trying out the practices. I'm writing the practices up one per week as a draft of the book, and they're giving radically honest feedback. Sometimes, that means being excited boosters. Occasionally, that means telling me that they HATED the practice... which has sent me back to the drawing board. This, obviously, is GREAT. (Interestingly, the hardest one so far has been "Tell simple history stories". I've spent a lot of time reworking that; I think I've now got a much more easily do-able version.)
One interesting thing: when I posted this nine months ago, I said I'd try to split this between being for homeschooling and non-homeschooling families. I've come to realize this was a mistake: a powerful book should do one thing. I spent a few weeks in the summer, thus, trying to make the book about parenting in general. I got as far as a whole table of contents... before realizing that it's too early to try to do that. Before I address parenting, I need to make a homeschooling curriculum (for elementary school, then middle school, then probably high school). You live, you learn. (That said, the book will still be useful to all parents, and I'll say that in there somewhere — but rhetorically, it has to be primarily pitched to one audience.)
What are your next steps?
Keep knocking out the practices in the book one at a time until summer. Then, in July, turn the draft into an intensive online course.
Why an online course? I realized that one of the reasons my ACX book review ended up as good as it was is that I first gave it as a series of online, Egan-ized lessons. (If you're interested: https://youtu.be/8QG3PtQka-o.) Doing this forced me to distill the ideas, and turn them into metaphors, vivid mental images, and stories — and pull together the unity of the whole thing.
I realized I should really be doing the same for this book — and that spending July giving a (live) course (w/ recordings available, too) will force me to do that.
It'll also, I think, be a good way to build a market for the book! I'll put it this way: I read a lot of homeschooling books, and while I have my favorites, I think it's fair to say that no one has yet written a truly GREAT book about homeschooling.
I think that, if I insert this extra step of creating an online course, this can be the first. Then, I'll plan to integrate what I've learned from that to create a final draft of the book through the next year, with the goal of self-publishing in summer 2026.
Is there anything others could help you with?
I'm not particularly successful at marketing, but I want us to do a great job marketing this online course in the homeschool community. Come spring, I'll be looking to hire someone to lead that. It's entirely possible I'll be able to find someone among the 60 families who're trying out the practices now (a lot of talent in that community), but if anyone has any notions on who I might hire for that, I'd be willing to talk.