What progress have you made since your last update?

We just finished recording a 10-workshop series laying out the whole paradigm this summer which went smashingly well! It ended up being even more exciting than I thought — by the end, we hash out a model for building deliberate practice into parenting/schooling from kindergarten on up. (Yes, I do know what "deliberate practice" means, and yes, I do know how nuts that sounds! That's why I'm so excited...)

You can see the whole thing at scienceisweird.com/homeschooling

What are your next steps?

In the workshops, we laid out ~70 practices parents can do at home with their kids. Instead of jumping into writing the book, we've decided to turn this into a two-year series of YouTube videos — we think that's a better way of gaining traction with people (and will also build an audience for the book). Watch for that soon.

Is there anything others could help you with?

If you've backed this project and would like to watch the recordings at a severe discount (or free? is that how Manifund works?), shoot me an email.

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.

I believe in Brandon. His book is going to be very very important and shape how people raise their kids for a lot of people and for a long time. It's long-range on the children's side, but it's immediate needs on parents side. Every dollar gives him breathing room and improves the quality of the end product.

I'm very curious about this one. From what I've seen, most educational funding results in "moving deck chairs on the Titanic," but as a potential parent, this resource seems like a possible step-function improvement in outcomes.

I read your book review! While I'm not a diehard convert yet, these ideas definitely seem worth exploring.

Brandon walks the walk when it comes to education; his ACX Book Review contest entry on the subject was not only well written, but also well structured with helpful illustrations and different text formats to drill home a point. (And the fact that he won is extremely high praise, given the quality of the competition!) I'm not normally a fan of educational interventions as their path to impact feels very long and uncertain, but I'd be excited to see what Brandon specifically can cook up.

(Disclamer: I, too, have some skin in the game, with a daughter coming out in ~July)