Announcing... our Egan homeschooling workshops

(For parents and teachers, too)

“But what does Egan education look like on a Tuesday morning?”

More than any other, that’s the question people have asked since we started this newsletter.¹ A lot of pushback on my book review, specifically, was that Egan’s method was more heady than hands-on.

And, yeah — that’s true! It’s been a serious weakness in the community. It’s why I’ve been building our Pattern Language for Egan education… but it, too, is still too abstract to be immediately useable for a lot of people. So, for the last year, I’ve been working with a group of 60 families around the world to figure out what Egan education can look like in homeschooling and parenting. And I’m excited to announce that we’re ready to show off the first draft of what we’ve come up with.

In brief: what if you could cultivate vivid intellectual experiences for your kids? What if you could help them fall in love with the world through the academic subjects? Starting this July, I’m giving ten live, boots-ready workshops that’ll help you do this, each laser-focused on a single slice of the curriculum.

Mmm, education.

The plan

When:

Dates: July 15 – August 14, 2025 (Tuesdays & Thursdays)
Time: 3pm EST / 12 pm PST

Imaginary Interlocutor: How long are the sessions?

I’m shooting to keep them under an hour and a half. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that I have… challenges in this sort of thing. I’ve decided to make this one of those times where I don’t fret going long — I’d prefer to share more rather than less. That said, upon signing up you’ll get the link to the live webinar and the link to the recordings (posted the evening after each), so you can watch the rest at your leisure (and perhaps at 2x speed).

What:

Session 1 (Tuesday July 15): A new way to see education
Session 2 (Thursday July 17): Geography & history
Session 3 (Tuesday July 22): The sciences
Session 4 (Thursday July 24): Problem-solving & arithmetic
Session 5 (Tuesday Jul 29): Foreign languages
Session 6 (Thursday July 31): Vocabulary & writing
Session 7 (Tuesday August 5): Literature
Session 8 (Thursday August 7): Art & music
Session 9 (Tuesday August 12): Philosophy & world religions
Session 10 (Thursday August 14): Adulting

You can read a brief description of each of these on the webpage at Science is WEIRD.

Who’s this for?

First and foremost, this is designed for homeschooling parents. The goal, by the end of it, is to give you a sketch of what a more-or-less full curriculum of Egan education might look like, for the first few years. Secondarily, it’s aimed at any parent who wants to help re-humanize their kid’s education. And thirdly, it’ll be useful for teachers hungry to bring more meaning and wonder into their classrooms.

Imaginary Interlocutor: Why lead with homeschooling? Isn’t that… niche?

Even though our ultimate goal is to create in-person Egan schools, any school is going to need a thick, umami-laden curriculum for students and teachers to really sink their teeth into. (This, I think, is where most alternative school models go wrong — they don’t understand that reinventing education means, first, reinventing the curriculum.) Creating the first sketch of this for homeschoolers lets us focus on curriculum before tackling things like government standards and teacher training and classroom management.

More importantly, though, I homeschool! My wife and I wrote homeschooling into our vows, and most of my teaching over the last 15 years has been in various homeschooling communities. So this is the context I know best. And what I can say is: I want to help make Egan education a third way (alongside all the educational progressivist and educational traditionalist approaches) in homeschooling.

I.I.: Is this going to be useful if I’m a parent who doesn’t homeschool?

YES. The beating heart of this is to help families become tighter cultures that experience the world as meaningful. The goal is for you to help your kids fall in love with the world, and find meaningful.

If your kids go to school, you can pick and choose any subjects that you’d most like to bond with them through. That might be a subject you already love (e.g. if you’re a nature lover, be sure to watch session three), or it might be a subject you’ve always found dull… but want to fall in love with yourself.

I.I.: Is this for kids or adults?

Kids are also welcome, but I’ll be speaking to adults.

I.I.: But what ages is this for?

I’ll give two answers to that. The first will be indirect and frustrating, and the second will be helpful (but also frustrating).

First, it’s for “the first few years of Egan education”. Here, that means MYTHIC (🧙‍♂️) and ROMANTIC (🦹‍♂️) ways of understanding these subjects. There’ll be hints of SOMATIC (🤸‍♀️), too, and all this will (of course) be aimed at laying the groundwork for deeply PHILOSOPHIC (👩‍🔬) understanding. (If you’re new to the blog, that was probably weird. Here’s what those symbols mean.)

Second, it’s for all ages. Does that sound unbelievable? Remember that Egan’s big claim is that schools try to rush to Philosophic understanding, and skip the actual foundations of education. That said, we’ve been designing this with a nod to making it grades 1, 2, 3, and 4 (roughly, ages 6–9) of Egan homeschooling, so you’ll see references to that. But the practices can easily be modified for older kids, and adults, too.

I.I.: Will the material go beyond the blog?

Quite! Some of these practices are evolutions of posts here; others are completely new.

I.I.: How much does it cost?

$360 USD, but we have a generous discount policy — if you need a discount, we’ll make one for you. See the webpage for details.

I.I.: What’ll I get if I sign up?

You’ll get a PDF with the link to the Zoom sessions (which will, again, start in July). After the first one happens, you’ll also get a link to the recordings, and to the online Google group (the Skeleton Army) in which we’ve been testing out these practices, so you can tell us how these are going for you, ask for help, and get ideas and perspectives.

I.I.: I don’t think this is for me, but I’d still like to help. Any notions?

Did you know that a single substantial, enthusiastic post to a Facebook group (or wherever) can spread the word more than I ever could?² If you’re willing to try, and have five minutes, I’d be grateful!

I.I.: I have more questions.

Ask in the comments below!

1. I mean, they don’t always say Tuesday — though it comes up more often than you’d think.

2. I’m still shocked at how true this is. Perhaps a quarter of Science is WEIRD’s audience came from a single Facebook post that a fellow homeschooler put up on a lark a couple summers ago.