The Beatrice Brigade by John Mark Reynolds | HOMESCHOOLING TODAY Magazine

Whenever I feel very bad, I make sure to speak to homeschool mothers. These women represent something new. They are not feminists—a phrase they most often reject with scorn. Most live in very traditional households where the husband is the head of the family. However, they are certainly not Donna Reed doormats waiting at home in pearls and high heels for their lord and master to arrive home. They are very strong and fiercely opinionated. They are incredibly well-read, devouring more books a year than most college students read in four years. Book a talk with a Plato scholar to hear about big ideas and they show up.

So what are they? They remind me most of the strong women of my greatgrandmother’s generation in West Virginia, who could run a farm, fix the roof, write hymns for the church, and who had never heard of bulimia. They did not worry about their body image, because they were secure in the love of their strong men. Ask those women what they thought and you heard more than you wanted to hear. I knew a few of these women—the last of the old pioneer stock—but only when they were old and tired.

The homeschool mothers of today are not old. Sometimes their brutal schedules may make them tired, but they are up for more in the morning. When I talk to them I quickly realize they care more about idea than rhetoric. They solve problems every day. They educate their children in highly creative ways, inventing curriculum, programs, and social events out of nothing but their talent. They are neither dowdy nor fashion-conscious. Their dress is most often sensible but feminine. They innovate, but within the bounds of tradition. What are they? God bless us, they are ladies; a group many thought had gone extinct around the time of the sinking of the Titanic.

In one sense, their lives are a bloodless martyrdom. The media mostly forgets them except for the occasional condescending piece in the Times. They fit no stereotypes—being too numerous and too interesting, so they are ignored. They sacrifice for the welfare of their children.

Talents that could vitalize a corporate board room are turned to teaching children to read. Their children, of course, take such sacrifice for granted. Their mothers make it safe for them to be blissfully unaware of their blessings. So these strong women sacrifice everything our culture deems important. They have no résumé-inflating career. Yet they give new life and meaning to all the Victorian platitudes lodged in the back of all our minds—because they are true. “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

Homeschooling mothers are kitchen- table Socrateses. They don’t trust the government schools that spend billions to produce cookie-cutter children. Not that they’re opposed to cookie cutters… they use them on cookies, not children. Like Socrates, they despise uniformity in education and people who teach for money and not for the love of the students. As a result, their children are producing reams of stories, hours of music, original plays, and a whole new civilization. If our boys are overseas defending the West, these women are home renewing it.

Homeschool mothers are the heart of a traditionalist revolution that is driving life back into the homes. To these women—and the men blessed to be married to them—homes are no longer assets or places to share a microwave dinner at the end of an exhausting day of separation. Spreading like some beneficial virus, men and women are returning basic educational, economic, and social functions to home… where they have always belonged.

A great poet was brought to see God through the example of one godly woman. Dante had his Beatrice and it was enough. It is harder for men in our materialistic age, so God has raised up thousands of such women. It is time to take a good hard look at what these heroes without epic poets are doing in quiet. I put very little trust in princes, whether elected or not. Rather, if the oldest stories are true, the fate of the Republic rests more with homeschool mothers.

There are now millions of these strong, independent, God-fearing women in the United States. They ask nothing of government but to be left alone.

These women are not impressed with stardom and glamour, many do not even own televisions. Their men work long hours in their own often not-very-glamorous businesses so that their wives can save the West. The men they admire get things done with decency and honor. They are often quiet men, but as sound as the state credit used to be. Their wives chose them for their virtues, not their muscles. Homeschool mothers are fiercely liberated and proudly traditional.

Seeing God in Beatrice allowed Dante to find his way back from darkness. Seeing God in homeschool mothers could show any man the way back to decency and honor. I know, because I am married to one and she fires my imagination, gives me hope, and is educating the future of our line.

Perhaps the West is in for difficult days . . . I could be wrong, but I would still bet the children of the Beatrice Brigade will prevail in the end. The sacrifice of such matrons cannot be for nothing.