Well-Trained Mind Press

Well-Trained Mind Press is Susan Wise Bauer's publishing house, built around her influential 1999 book The Well-Trained Mind and distributed internationally by W. W. Norton. The press is secular by framing and classical by method; its history and writing titles are among the most widely adopted in the American classical homeschool movement.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical / narrative history / structured writing
Worldview	Secular (framed for adaptation by religious families; no doctrinal content embedded in the core history or writing programs)
Grades	K-12 across the full catalog; history elementary, writing K-high school
Formats	Print books, downloadable PDFs, audiobooks; Well-Trained Mind Academy operates separately as an online school
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Yes, widely approved as secular curricula on state ESA marketplaces
Accredited	Well-Trained Mind Academy is accredited; individual Press titles are curricular products not subject to accreditation
Established	Well-Trained Mind Press (as Peace Hill Press) founded 2001; The Well-Trained Mind book published 1999
Website	welltrainedmind.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	History sequence is scholarly and narrative-strong; Writing with Ease and Writing with Skill are among the most structured elementary/middle writing programs available
Ease of teaching	4	Teacher guides are detailed and scripted; the first-time parent can teach Writing with Ease from the workbook
Content quality	5	Susan Wise Bauer writes her own core texts; they are accessible, well-researched, and widely praised
Flexibility	5	Designed for eclectic assembly; Story of the World pairs with any math or science program
Value for money	4	Print books at standard publisher prices; PDF options for budget families
Worldview scope	5	Secular framing with explicit provision for religious families to add their own doctrinal content
Visual/design	3	Functional book design; Story of the World illustrations by Jeff West are distinctive but not full-color picture-book quality
Support resources	4	Well-Trained Mind forums are active; Well-Trained Mind Academy offers live classes for families seeking outsourced instruction

Who the publisher is

Well-Trained Mind Press was founded in 2001 by Susan Wise Bauer, originally under the name Peace Hill Press. Bauer holds a BA, MDiv, MA, and PhD (the last two from the College of William and Mary), and she has taught writing at William and Mary since the late 1990s. Her 1999 book The Well-Trained Mind, co-authored with her mother Jessie Wise, is one of the foundational texts of the modern secular classical homeschool movement, it walks a parent through what classical education looks like at each stage of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and provides concrete curriculum recommendations across subjects. The book remains in print in its fourth edition through W. W. Norton, which also distributes much of Well-Trained Mind Press's catalog internationally.

The press's flagship products are Story of the World (four-volume narrative history for grades 1-4) and the Complete Writer series, Writing with Ease for grades 1-4 and Writing with Skill for grades 5-8. Bauer also writes adult-level history titles published through Norton, including The History of the Ancient World, The History of the Medieval World, and The History of the Renaissance World. These adult titles are not curriculum per se but are used by older homeschool students as upper-level reading companions to Story of the World.

Separately, Bauer operates Well-Trained Mind Academy, an online school for grades 4-12 delivered through live synchronous classes. The Academy is institutionally distinct from the Press, though they share founder, brand, and classical model. This review addresses the Press catalog as homeschool curriculum; the Academy is its own product.

The secular-by-framing position matters. Story of the World narrates world history from the ancient world through the modern period without a specific religious lens, but Bauer includes Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and other religious histories in the narrative as historical material. The Complete Writer series is subject-neutral. Religious families regularly use both series successfully, supplementing with their own religious texts; secular families use them without adjustment. The press's editorial choice to frame its materials secularly has given it cross-worldview adoption in a way that explicitly religious publishers cannot match.

The core pedagogy

The press's curriculum materials embody Bauer's classical-trivium framework. At the grammar stage (grades 1-4, roughly), students build fact-based foundations, reading narrative history aloud, copying passages, learning to summarize. At the logic stage (grades 5-8), students begin analyzing relationships between facts, writing summary paragraphs, comparing sources, making arguments. At the rhetoric stage (grades 9-12), students synthesize and produce original work. The Press publishes core materials for the first two stages; Bauer's four-edition book The Well-Trained Mind provides the framework parents use to assemble a full rhetoric-stage curriculum from the Press's materials and from outside sources.

Story of the World organizes world history chronologically across four volumes: Volume 1 (Ancient Times), Volume 2 (Middle Ages), Volume 3 (Early Modern), Volume 4 (Modern Age). Each volume has a narrative main text (written for reading aloud to a student or for independent reading in later elementary), a companion activity book (maps, review questions, projects, supplemental reading lists), a test book, and an audiobook. A family cycling through the four-year sequence covers world history twice by the end of eighth grade (once in elementary, once in middle school using higher-level texts). The press released a 25th Anniversary Expanded Edition of Volume 1 in 2026.

The Complete Writer series teaches elementary and middle school writing through the classical tradition of narration, dictation, copywork, and original composition, advancing in carefully calibrated steps. Writing with Ease Levels 1-4 introduce dictation and summary skills; Writing with Skill Levels 1-3 (roughly grades 5-7) teach outlining, paragraph structure, and multi-paragraph composition. The sequence is precise and sequential, students who work through the full arc arrive at high school with a strong written-composition foundation.

Signature mechanics: (1) Chronological world history read aloud. Story of the World treats history as a story with characters and a thread, not as a textbook with shaded boxes and vocabulary lists. (2) Narration and dictation as core writing pedagogy. The Complete Writer teaches students to listen carefully, summarize accurately, and imitate structure before producing original work. (3) Written-to-the-student instruction in middle school. Writing with Skill addresses the student directly, which makes the program workable with less parent involvement at the middle grades. (4) Secular framing with religious adaptability. The curriculum presents factual content across world religions as historical material; religious families add their own doctrinal study.

A day in the life

A second-grader working through Story of the World Volume 2 (Middle Ages) and Writing with Ease Level 2 starts the morning with Bible or religious study of the family's choice, then moves to history. The parent reads aloud a short chapter from the Story of the World narrative (this week's chapter is on Charlemagne), approximately 10-15 minutes. The child then narrates back what he heard; the parent writes down the narration or has the child dictate. Map work from the activity book follows (labeling the extent of Charlemagne's empire), and a coloring page or hands-on project caps the session at 30-40 minutes.

Writing with Ease runs as a separate 15-minute daily block. Today's task: the parent reads a short passage from a children's literature selection, the child orally summarizes, the parent writes down one sentence of the summary, and the child copies it in their own handwriting. Tomorrow's task: dictation of a short sentence from the same source. Over the week, the child builds summary skills on Monday and Tuesday, dictation on Wednesday, and copywork on Thursday and Friday.

Total time for both subjects combined is about an hour, modest for a second-grader's full school day, leaving time for math, reading, science, and play.

What they do exceptionally well

Narrative history that children remember. Story of the World is the most widely adopted narrative world history in the homeschool market for good reason. Bauer writes well, treats history as a story, and tells it without patronizing children. A generation of classical-homeschool graduates cites Story of the World as the first time they understood history as a connected sequence rather than a list of unrelated topics.

Writing pedagogy with ruthless structure. Writing with Ease and Writing with Skill advance in small, measured steps; the teacher guide is specific about what the student does each day. Families who have tried more free-form writing curricula and felt adrift often find the Complete Writer series a relief. Students who have struggled with writing assignments in more open-ended programs often flourish when the task is "copy these two sentences" rather than "write about what you learned."

Secular framing with explicit religious adaptability. The Press's editorial choice to frame materials secularly has produced a catalog used by secular, Catholic, evangelical Protestant, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and unaffiliated homeschool families with minimal adjustment. This is rare in the homeschool publishing market and worth naming as a structural strength.

What they do poorly

Visual design lags behind contemporary children's publishing. Story of the World's illustrations are line-art, sometimes charming, sometimes dated, and do not match the full-color, photo-heavy design standards of contemporary trade children's books. Families whose children are visually oriented may want to supplement with trade-published picture books from the corresponding historical period.

No video instruction. The Press produces print books, PDFs, and audiobooks. There is no video component, no streaming lesson series. Families wanting video instruction should look at Well-Trained Mind Academy (the Press's sister online school) or at other publishers entirely.

Rhetoric-stage materials are not directly published by the Press at the same scale as grammar and logic. The Press publishes Writing with Skill through Level 3 (roughly grade 7); it does not publish its own high-school-specific writing or history spine. For high school, Bauer's The Well-Trained Mind book directs families to assemble a rhetoric-stage curriculum from Well-Trained Mind Press materials supplemented by outside sources (Lost Tools of Writing, Great Books, AP texts). This is an intentional editorial choice but means the Press is a K-8 core curriculum with a high school assembly guide, not a packaged 9-12 program.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Well-Trained Mind Press if: you want a secular classical spine for history and writing at grades K-8; you want strong narrative text materials that children actually enjoy; you value structured writing pedagogy that builds step by step; your family is across the worldview spectrum and wants curriculum without embedded doctrinal content; you read The Well-Trained Mind book and found the framework compelling.

• Skip Well-Trained Mind Press if: you want a packaged K-12 curriculum from a single publisher with everything bundled; you want video instruction as the primary delivery mode; you prefer textbook-and-test pedagogy to narration and dictation; you want specifically Christian or religious content embedded in the history and writing texts; your child resists read-aloud or narration-based instruction.

Cost honest assessment

Individual titles from Well-Trained Mind Press are priced in the standard educational-publishing range. A Story of the World Volume 1 Text retails at approximately $20-$30, with the companion Activity Book at a similar price point and the Test Book and audiobook as additional options. A full SOTW bundle (text, activity book, tests, student pages) for one volume runs approximately $60-$90. Writing with Ease workbooks run approximately $35-$45 per year per student; Writing with Skill student workbook plus instructor text runs approximately $55-$75 per year per student.

A realistic annual budget for a second-grader using Well-Trained Mind Press for history (one volume of SOTW) and writing (one level of Writing with Ease) runs $90-$130 in materials. A middle-school student using a year of Writing with Skill runs $55-$80. For comparison, Sonlight's literature-based history packages at comparable grades run $400-$800, and BookShark's secular equivalents run similarly. Well-Trained Mind Press sits meaningfully below these all-in packages because the Press sells components rather than bundles.

ESA eligibility notes

Well-Trained Mind Press titles are widely approved on state ESA marketplaces as secular curriculum. Florida's Step Up For Students Personalized Education Program, Arizona ESA, Iowa's Students First, and other state programs that permit curriculum purchases typically list Well-Trained Mind Press as an approved vendor. Because the materials are secular by framing, they do not run into religious-materials restrictions that affect explicitly Christian publishers on some state ESA programs. Families should verify specific SKU availability on their state's marketplace before ordering.

Alternatives

• Sonlight, a family would choose Sonlight over Well-Trained Mind Press because Sonlight bundles a full literature-based curriculum (history, reading, language arts in one package) in a Christian-evangelical frame, where Well-Trained Mind Press requires the parent to assemble components across a secular frame.
• Memoria Press, a family would choose Memoria Press over Well-Trained Mind Press because Memoria Press offers a more fully integrated classical Christian curriculum with Latin as the central discipline, where Well-Trained Mind Press is secular and writes around but not explicitly within the Latin-centered classical tradition.
• BookShark, a family would choose BookShark over Well-Trained Mind Press because BookShark packages secular literature-based instruction into a full weekly schedule with scripted guides, where Well-Trained Mind Press requires more parent assembly.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed Well-Trained Mind Press's product pages at welltrainedmind.com, the Story of the World and Complete Writer series pages, the Susan Wise Bauer author site, and the separately operated Well-Trained Mind Academy site. We cross-referenced against Wikipedia's article on Susan Wise Bauer, Cathy Duffy Reviews, and W. W. Norton's distribution of Bauer's trade-published history titles. Prices and program details verified April 2026.