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Educated

Tara Westover

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Apr 20, 2020 Jasper Burns rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography-and-memoirs, favorites, religion

I see why Educated has become the bestseller that it is. Tara Westover shares her compelling story of childhood with a family of ultra-separatist, ultra-conspiratorial Mormons. Her parents are the kind that distrust the government so fully that their entire lives have been spent prepping for the end of days. Tara and her siblings never received a birth certificate, and never attended school. They spent their childhood building, farming, and preparing mason jars of food. They were anti-doctor, an I see why Educated has become the bestseller that it is. Tara Westover shares her compelling story of childhood with a family of ultra-separatist, ultra-conspiratorial Mormons. Her parents are the kind that distrust the government so fully that their entire lives have been spent prepping for the end of days. Tara and her siblings never received a birth certificate, and never attended school. They spent their childhood building, farming, and preparing mason jars of food. They were anti-doctor, anti-vax, anti-everything establishment.

Eventually—spoiler alert—Tara finds her way to BYU on the back of an ACT test with almost no actual knowledge of math, history or school subjects at all. She had never heard of the holocaust until college classmates and teachers thought she was joking. Her self-drive to learn after realizing the depths of her own ignorance eventually bring her to Cambridge and Harvard. She is, finally, educated. The cracks within her family widen.

My main takeaways were as follows:
- After having read Unveiled and Infidel, I had grown accustomed to these types of stories coming from oppressed Muslim women. Educated opened my eyes to the fact that there are fringe families at the edges of society where these unfortunate oppressions occur as well. The difference as it were was that in the extremist Muslim case the abuse is often community-wide whereas in this case it is mostly singular. Nonetheless, it was good to have my brain recaged so as to widen my perspective of what these kinds of stories look like.
- Self-motivated learning is the best way to become educated. I have found this in my own life, and the fact that a girl who did not know algebra and could not distinguish Martin Luther King Jr. from Martin Luther could graduate college and be a successful prestigious graduate and PhD student just years later is proof positive of the power of intrinsic motivation.
- Similarly, much of traditional education is unnecessary. While one of the central points of the book is her intense regret on having foregone a normal education, the speed at which she caught up makes me doubly certain the kids homeschooled in an intelligent way, rather than a negligent one, could really develop quickly.
- Domestic violence and abuse come in many forms. Many of her and her family's great injuries and misfortunes came as much from neglect and irresponsibility as they did from intentional malice.

Highly recommend. One of the most compelling biographies I've read.

View my best reviews and a collection of my mental models at jasperburns.blog. ...more

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May 17, 2023 Faith Fisher rated it it was amazing

Sep 20, 2019 Ben Thomas rated it really liked it

Jan 02, 2022 Eric Johnson added it

Feb 23, 2022 Elise Miner rated it it was amazing

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