For those of you that haven't or couldn't attend book club lately, we'll be publishing the previous months' discussion questions here. I hope eventually to post discussion questions for all of the books we've covered since I took over a couple of years ago, maybe even beyond. It will take a while. Until then, we will be posting discussion questions a couple of times a month. Here are the questions from this 2019 title, Educated: A Memoir. We hope these questions spark discussions of your own.
Educated: A Memoir
by Tara Westover
Summary:
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her 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. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Note: As of this post, the other side of the story has been written by Tara's mother, LaRee, in a book entitled Educating. Our library collection does not have a copy.
https://mrsladywordsmith.com/educating-memoir-laree-tara-westover/
Discussion Questions
We are introduced early in the book to the standoff at Ruby Ridge. How does this incident cast a shadow over the Westover parents and children, and the survivalism that characterizes their upbringing?
According to the book, what is voice, and how important is it that every child be encouraged to find their own?
At one point, Tara’s father makes the case that his form of homeschooling couldn’t have been that bad since three of his children went on to receive their PhDs. What do you make of this? Did his children succeed in spite of their education, or were there some inherent lessons about how to learn imparted by this non-traditional form of education?
Taking off of the previous question: How do you think Tara’s early life would have been different had she had more traditional schooling - or actual homeschooling? How do you think that would have changed her early college experience?
Do you think there should be some topics that must be taught no matter what? What are they and why?
Charles was Tara’s first window into the outside world. Under his influence, Tara begins to dress differently and takes medicine for the first time. Discuss Tara’s conflicting admiration for both Charles and her father.
How does Tyler’s unexpected leaving for college and their father’s reaction to this decision have an impact on Westover?
Tara’s brother Tyler tells her to take the ACT. What motivates Tara to follow his advice?
What risks did she face and what fears did the author have to overcome in order to leave home and pursue her higher education? How did Westover change as a result of her formalized education?
Other than in a school setting, what other important moments of “education” did Tara experience? What friends, acquaintances, or experiences had the most impact on Tara? What does that imply about what an education is?
Why is it significant that Westover didn’t know the word “holocaust” and had no knowledge of race issues in the United States? How does her view/awareness of racism evolve throughout the book? How does it affect her family?
What does Westover’s family try to impart about a woman’s place and how do they convey this? How does this influence and shape her sense of self? In what ways does the author challenge her parents’ notions of what a woman should be and how is this received?
Westover takes great effort to ensure objectivity in her memoir, including footnotes where accounts of an event differ, or comparing her diary entries to her memory. As a reader, how important is objectivity in this story, and more largely, in memoirs in general?
Many of Tara’s father’s choices have an obvious impact on Tara’s life, but how did her mother’s choices influence her? How did that change over time? How did her mother change over time? In regards to medicine? Education?
After Westover decides to continue her education, she finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile her life on the mountain with her new life as a student of history. She writes that she had a “fractured mind.” Does it seem to you that she must lose one life to gain another?
Westover writes that her father looked slumped when she left for Cambridge, an expression of “love and fear and loss” because when she’s across the ocean he can’t keep her safe. How did you view her relationship with her father, and did your perception of that relationship change throughout the book?
By Chapter 12, “Fish Eyes,” we are introduced to Shawn’s abuse of Westover and the other women in his life, which recurs throughout the book. When Westover starts crying over one of these early incidents, she writes that she is crying from the pain, not from Shawn hurting her, and that she sees herself as “unbreakable.” She also writes that his abuse not affecting her “was its effect.” Why is this insight important?
Do you think that the family’s constant exposure to her father’s instability affected their response to allegations - or incidents of - Shawn’s abuse? How does the family respond?
How does the murder of Shawn’s dog change things for Westover?
The discussion of the malleability of memory is a reoccurring phenomenon throughout the book. Why do you think this is? Why do you think memory is so uncertain?
Do you think Westover’s father had any influence on Shawn’s behavior? Nurture? Nature? Anything else?
How did the accidents in the book shape Tara’s experience and relationship with her family?
Throughout the book, Westover refers back to journals she kept while growing up. Sometimes, she recorded events as they really felt, but many times, she says she presented events as less traumatic than they really were, or used “vague, shadowy language” to obscure how she’d been hurt. How do these journals inform the book? How do they inform her?
What impact did the author’s parents’ religious beliefs have on the Westover family? What challenges of faith does the author confront as she moves into her future? How does her schooling help her to confront these issues from a new perspective?
At Brigham Young, Tara recounts going to a professor for moral advice, and instead being encouraged to apply for a very competitive study abroad program at Cambridge University, which she’d never imagined she could qualify to do. “He’d seemed to say, ‘First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are,’” she writes. Has anyone ever given you advice to do something beyond what you thought you were capable? Did you follow it?
What keeps Tara coming back to her family as an adult?
Westover says she believed she could “be remade, my mind recast” at her university. And in the end, she writes that she is a “changed person” from the person she was as her father’s daughter, and from her 16-year-old self. “You could call this selfhood many things,” she writes. “Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.” What do you make of these final lines?
Tara wrote this at the age of thirty, while in the midst of her healing process. Why do you think she chose to write it so young, and how does this distinguish the book from similar memoirs?
Tara paid a high price for her education: she lost her family. Do you think she would make the same choice again?
Looking back over the book, what did you learn about family and forgiveness and trauma? What did you learn about education?
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