Educated

Educated will help you become more grateful for your schooling, freedom, and normal relationships by explaining the family difficulties that Tara Westover had to break free of so that she could get her own education.

Tara was born at home to an off-the-grid family in the mountains of Idaho. Her mother raised the children and practiced herbal medicine, and her father ran the farm and was the religious head of the household. Her father’s ideas were extremist and often dangerous.

He believed public schools just brainwashed children and as such she and her siblings were “homeschooled.” It was a stretch to call it that because while her mother did teach her bits of history and math here and there, most of her learning came from reading books to try to figure things out herself.

That wasn’t the only part of her family life that was strange, though. Her father was extreme in many of his beliefs. Because he didn’t believe in hospitals or modern medicine, Tara had never been to the doctor and was born at home. Members of the family suffered everything from concussions and even burns from explosions and only herbal medicine for treatment.

She had close relationships with some of her siblings, though one of her brothers, Shawn, would sometimes attack her verbally and physically and her parents didn’t intervene. Another older brother, Tyler, took the time to study and was able to get into college. It was her brother’s example that planted the seeds for Tara to buckle down and study on her own.

As she got older, Tara set her sights on college despite her father’s strong expectations that she get married. She worked relentlessly to teach herself grammar and math to get a good enough ACT score to get into Brigham Young University. When she was accepted, her father tried to stop her, but Tara’s mind was made up. College was a shock for her. Unlike rural Idaho, Provo was a fairly big city, and she was amazed to see her roommates doing things like showing their shoulders or shopping on Sunday. It was here she went to the doctor for the first time in her life and was surprised it wasn’t a horrible place like she had been taught. These experiences made her realize how big the gap between her former reality and the rest of the world truly was. But the other big surprise for Tara was how difficult college was. She struggled and even remembers how her professor stared in disbelief as she asked what the Holocaust was. But she didn’t give up. Tara kept studying hard, began to get good grades, and even started to impress her professors. This hard…