Educated

Our book group choice for December 2019 is Educated by Tara Westover. Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”.

Educated is a memoir by Tara Westover, an American author who was born into a survivalist Mormon family in the mountains of Idaho. Westover grew up without any formal education, and her parents believed that hospitals, public schools, and the government were all corrupt. As a result, Westover was homeschooled by her mother, and she learned about the world through her father’s survivalist books and her own observations.

In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Here are some of the themes that are explored in Educated:

• The importance of education
• The power of knowledge
• The struggle for self-invention
• The importance of family
• The nature of faith
• The dangers of isolation

The book has been praised by critics for its honesty, its insights, and its literary merit. It has also been a commercial success, selling over 1 million copies in the United States.

Discussion Questions for Educated

1. Inspiring that anyone can come out of this environment and be able to think expansively.
2. Where is the beauty she speaks of? In having complete emotions? She means the naming of emotions? That they are beautiful when they are identified and reflected on.
3. Contrast this with what Tara’s emotions were. Or is it the process of naming them? This links with the process idea of Dewey.
4. Bigger theme. It seems that three siblings did so well. There’s’ a kind of benefit to thinking oppositionally? is is rewarded by academia?
5. To a greater or lesser extent, is every family a kind of cult?
6. You grow up accepting its rules and part of growing is to question them.
7. Was there a character you liked or disliked particularly?
8. Apache tears, the tiny incremental decisions, even over generations can lead to a terrible conclusion. The difference between a battle and a slaughter does this resonate with you when you think about the book?
9. In this family did the children benefit or suffer from not having peers at school to compare themselves with?
10. What do you think about the idea that you don’t need to go to a school to be Educated?
11. Two’s dad said “You can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you”
12. Rather brutal and (ironically) Darwinian in that only those that really wanted education managed to get it and took it to the highest level.
13. Studying historiography, not just happened but why ideas and history are written.
14. How reliable is the narrator?
15. Would you recommend the book?

Individual Ratings

Jo's Rating  

EmmaT's Rating  

Catherine's Rating  

Sue's Rating  

Willow's Rating  

Anthony's Rating  

DKB's Rating