Biography

Educated: A difficult, absorbing read

Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir has taken the reading public by storm since it was published last year, and with good reason. A gripping read by any measure, the book details Westover’s journey as a child of survivalist parents in the hills of Idaho. Her parents want to keep their lives off the grid and out of reach of “the Feds,” so they do not register her birth and do not enroll her in school. How she gets from there to a PhD in history from Cambridge makes up much of the book’s content.

Yet when I finished reading, I wondered if the author’s education can be considered the book’s main subject at all. Along with education, it exposes details of the family’s eccentric and extreme practice of Mormonism, the consequences of a family patriarchy in which the father (Westover theorizes) shows symptoms of bipolar disorder, and an abusive relationship with an older brother.

But in deference to the title, let’s start with the educational theme. As a homeschooler in one of the most heavily regulated states in the nation, I would dispute Westover’s use of the term “homeschooling” to describe her experience as a child. Her parents provide no systematic academic instruction whatsoever. Their science curriculum consists of an illustrated children’s book. She describes math instruction this way: “I opened my math book and and spent ten minutes turning pages, running my fingers down the center fold. If my finger touched fifty pages, I’d report to Mother that I’d done fifty pages of math.” Somehow she learns to read, and in her teens she practices the skill by reading her father’s books about Mormonism.

When she decides, with the encouragement of her older brother Tyler (now a PhD in mechanical engineering), to try for college, she must start from scratch, buying an ACT study guide, teaching herself algebra and trigonometry using textbooks, and developing her reading skills. She gets into Brigham Young University at age 17 based exclusively on the ACT. No transcript. No diploma. No academic record at all.

My reaction to this was mixed. First, of course, I am impressed. As a college teacher, I recognize the high levels of motivation and ability that her preparation demonstrate. But there are drawbacks as well. Her ACT score does not measure her readiness for college, as she discovers once she gets into the classroom and doesn’t realize she is supposed to read the textbook, doesn’t know what the Holocaust is, and has no framework at all to orient her to the world of the university.

Second, as a homeschooler in a highly regulated state, I feel a twinge of envy. Even to get into an open admission community college where I live, my children have to supply a letter of completion from the school district that certifies compliance with state homeschool law. This means that every year, we have supplied an instructional plan listing materials, four quarterly reports, standardized test results, and evidence of meeting the state’s curricular requirements specifying a certain number of credits in each subject — math, science, health, economics, U.S. history, government, English, social studies, art, music and P.E. I feel incredulous that someone in another state can be entirely neglected educationally for 16 years, then enter college based on one test.

But third, it certainly makes one wonder if all the requirements of a state like mine are a bit overblown, doesn’t it? Westover, after all, survives in the university world. What combination of factors is responsible for this? It certainly has nothing to do with educational standards set by government, because none were attained. Some of it is surely that Westover’s parents demonstrate a strong work ethic; they work hard and expect their children to as well. Her mother is a self-taught herbalist and midwife whose business has garnered widespread success, and during Westover’s childhood she spent a lot of time helping “strain tinctures” and helping in other ways. Her father ran a scrap yard and expected all of his children to help, including Tara. But beyond this character trait, coupled with determination and an obviously sharp mind, Westover does not meet any of the requirements for success as determined by the educational establishment: no STEM-intensive instruction, long hours in the classroom, trained teachers, AP courses, or nationally-normed tests.

As I think about this, when I reflect on Westover’s experience with higher education I am perplexed by her persistent feeling that she has missed out by not being put in school. One of her moments of insight comes when she jots in a notebook, “I don’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to get a decent education as a child.” She has the faith in public education that only someone who has not experienced it would have. As both student and teacher, I have concluded that everyone comes through with gaps and misinterpretations. Much of it may have to do with levels of readiness, which could explain why we may take chemistry and algebra in high school and then take them again in college (or not) because we forgot everything we “learned.” But in some sense we all end up missing out on a perfect education, with or without public school. By the time she did learn some of these missing pieces, Westover had a level of maturity, and they had a greater (and perhaps more appropriate) impact on her developing worldview than they would have otherwise. For instance, she was not desensitized to things like racism or war, so learning about how these exerted a force in history carried an appropriate moral weight.

All of this is to say that as a reflection on education, Westover’s account is complex and interesting, and it leaves us with more questions than answers. For Westover herself, education means something broader than academic preparation. It has to do with the development of a self through the increasing awareness that enables us to choose who we become. “You could call this selfhood many things,” Westover writes, “Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.”

In Westover’s case, this kind of education is related to the growing understanding of the dysfunctional family dynamics from which she has now separated herself. Her family forms the backdrop of her story, and as she has indicated in interviews, she tries to tell the story as she experienced it, placing us in her shoes.

It is no small feat to break out of destructive patterns, ingrained over many years, but we learn a lot about some of them over the course of the story. At the center is Westover’s controlling, volatile father whose refusal to obtain birth certificates for his children, whose preparation for the “Day of Abomination” and resistance of any influence from the government or the medical establishment (populated, he says, by “the Illuminati”) are pursued with religious fervor. In the family structure he is more a force than a person, like a black hole whose gravitational pull shapes the patterns of the stars. Despite his obvious love for his children and his desire to protect their souls, he fails to protect Tara in basic ways, from safe practices in the junk yard to defending her from an older brother who physically and emotionally abuses her. I’m no expert on Mormonism, but Westover touches here and there on a subservience it encourages in women. Though her mother is a capable and strong person, I wondered if this dynamic may have been what prevented her from intervening on her daughter’s behalf, perpetuating and justifying the behavior of the father and the brother.

The tale is a suspenseful one, and any reader feels relief when finally some healthy boundary-drawing occurs. But as I contemplated the story, I reflected that fanaticism is often a question of degree, not of kind. For example, in the homeschooling and evangelical communities, I know of people who are against vaccines, who use homeopathic cures rather than antibiotics, who believe in the healing power of God, and who distrust government and public education. I know people who feel strongly that household and church gender roles in the Bible should be reflected today. To what degree are these ideals helpful? At what point do they cease to be supportable, or become destructive to people or to communities?

The book encourages reflection on these kinds of questions as we think about Westover’s memories. Well-paced, suspenseful, and cleanly written, her account attempts to do justice to flawed, complicated people with whom she shares a strong bond of familial love. Unlike some, I don’t read the book as a “bashing” of her family, but as an honest effort to share her experience in a way that stimulates us to think. She is honest about the role of memory in anyone’s attempt to write memoir, and the text includes footnotes where other family members remember events differently than she does. It’s difficult to come away from the book without a certain grudging admiration for the unapologetic individualism of Westover’s parents, despite our indignation and sorrow for the harm and injustice they have inflicted. In this sense, Westover succeeds perfectly in guiding us through her tale, because in some measure this is likely the mixture of emotions she feels herself.


Further reading: From the multitude of reviews out there, I wanted to reference these two, both written by people close to Tara:

  • Drew Mecham, Tara’s close friend, offers this review of the book on Amazon on 4/8/18.
  • Tyler Westover, Tara’s brother, offers a thoughtful commentary, including some new information, here. It is from an Amazon review on 2/26/18.

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