Educated by Tara Westover

  

In Educated Tara Westover recounts her isolated childhood in rural Idaho and how she later decided to leave that life and pursue her education and a mind of her own. It wasn’t quite what I expected. If you are at all triggered by stories of abuse, brace yourself before picking this up.

Educated is divided into three parts. The first part of the book focuses on Tara’s childhood. Tara’s family reminded me a little of the Waltons (in a good way), a show I started watching during the pandemic when there were few new shows on. The Westovers weren’t rich but they had enough food to fill their bellies, a roof over their heads, and family around the table every night and in that way, they were fine. There was also plenty that wasn’t fine. The kids didn’t go to school and were working jobs at far too young an age. Tara’s father was convinced the either the end times were coming soon or that the family would be attacked by the government, so he made his family prepare. Somewhere in the mountain where Tara grew up there are stockpiles of food and guns buried in the ground.

One thing that I kept thinking as I read this book is how lucky the seven Westover children are to have made it to adulthood alive with all body parts still attached. There were so many accidents – two very serious car accidents, a motorcycle accident, and various workplace accidents at Tara father’s junkyard, including a fire and an explosion. What made it all worse is that Tara’s parents didn’t trust western medicine. They chose instead to place their faith in God and in Tara’s mother’s healing herbs and essential oils. Somehow none of them died.

Along with not trusting doctors and hospitals, the Westovers also didn’t trust the government or anything remotely associated with the government including public education. When Tara applied to Brigham Young University (BYU) she told them she had been homeschooled but that implies there was a systematic method of teaching in the home and that doesn’t seem to have been the case for Tara and her younger siblings. (Some of the older kids apparently received some formal education but not much.) The ACT Tara took as part of her college application was the first test she ever took. The first time she set foot in a classroom was when she enrolled at BYU.

It must be said that there are somethings that don’t quite add up in terms of Tara’s education journey. The way it reads Tara (and the two brothers that also went on to earn doctorates) are geniuses that can learn anything in a few months. Despite not having any kind of formal or informal education, Tara somehow taught herself enough math to pass her college entry exam. She failed an art history exam because it didn’t occur to her that she was supposed to read the textbook and not just look at the pictures, but by the end of the semester she had all As and Bs.

The second part of Educated recounts Tara’s college years and it is during this time that Tara begins to realize the gulf that exists between her family and childhood and the way other people live. BYU is a Mormon institution so it’s not like Tara was suddenly thrust into a totally foreign, secular world and yet so much was foreign to her. She is shocked when her roommate goes grocery shopping on the sabbath and cannot believe women are walking around campus in skirts that don’t go down to their ankles.

In part three Educated turns into a memoir of abuse and survival. This part I was not prepared for. Throughout Educated Tara’s parents (especially her father) are shown at times to be neglectful and controlling but the real danger is Tara’s older brother Shawn. Tara gives multiple examples of Shawn physically abusing and manipulating her and other women in his life. As much as Educated is about Tara not attending school for the first 17 years of her life and going on to earn a doctorate, it is also about her coming to recognize the abuse for what it was and the wrongness of it. Unfortunately, much of her family doesn’t see it that way.

Educated was definitely interesting. It took a while for me to get into but once I was in, I was all in. I even kind of what to read Tara’s doctorate. Fortunately, I work at an academic institution so finding a copy might be possible.