Karen Swallow Prior, paraphrasing a John Milton speech from a much earlier time, writes that there is a distinction “between the innocent, who know no evil and the virtuous who know what evil is and elect to do good” (On Reading Well, 14-15).
I thought of this on September 11 as my small co-op class of homeschooled students gathered in my living room to finish a discussion of Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Anglo-Saxon classic Beowulf. I knew recent events were heavy on my students’ minds, as they were on mine. I was also remembering the events of September 11, 2001, a day that impacted my generation fiercely.
The world is evil. This no longer startles me, but looking at my students’ youthful faces preparing to recite Anglo-Saxon boasts they had written, I wondered what to say.
As so often happens, I found the answer in the text. Here in this story from an ancient time, the poet tells us that the monster Grendel comes to kill the community of Shieldings because:
It harrowed him
To hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of man’s beginnings,
how the Almighty had made the earth… (Heaney, 9).
My class discussed that there is nothing new under the sun. Some people choose to participate in evil because they hate the sounds of joyful people, communities celebrating, and the way God created the world.
Parents across America are having conversations about evil and darkness and why horrible things happen to good people. Homeschooling gives us the opportunity to have those conversations first and to teach what matters most. We have the privilege of teaching our children to read, but even more to help them learn how to seek wisdom and do good in the face of evil.
So, we talked about monsters, and we talked about heroes, and they performed their boasts with hopeful faces. I sent them off with texts to their moms to be sure they performed their boasts for their families. And I listened as my own daughter brought joy to her world-weary dad as she performed hers.
It’s a good time to be homeschooling. Not because we are afraid. Because we have hope. And we believe that while evil is a reality, good triumphs in the end.