Abuse In Educated By Tara Westover

Education’s Gateway Education is a venture found taxing by many. However, for those born or caught in hardship, it can be utilized as a means to progress in life. The journey in which the scholar goes through can be transformative not only to the development of their success, but also to the surpassing of their former lives. The novel Educated by Tara Westover tells the story of a girl growing up in an extremely abusive home, and while the story may be troubling at times, this moving memoir is an excellent example of the power education can hold in an individual’s life. Those growing up in abusive homes, whether physical or mental, can attest to the fact that what Tara Westover did was not easy. The psychological effects of abuse are

DoHHS 3). This means that even as the person may be doing their best to work through disordered emotions and the other side effects of their past, there may be an overruling factor which prevents them from doing even trivial things that are reminiscent of their pasts. Westover herself went through experiences which warranted such extreme conditions. The abuse that she went through put her at a disadvantage in the battle between her future and past; it worked overtime to blend the two into one so that she could never truly escape from her former self. Given this, the evolution throughout the life of Tara Westover is not only truly exceptional, but almost unbelievable. Her parents had a tendency to be careless with her and her siblings, seemingly not caring too deeply on how their actions may affect their kids. Once, her father was driving from Arizona back to their home state of Idaho through a storm, although warned not to. The car flipped and landed upside down. Westover was left unconscious, the mattress she had been laying on before the crash pinning her. She had to crawl through broken glass herself to escape (Westover 94). Her father had knowingly driven into

One other way this method is used is to put down religious minorities. The first example that comes to most people's minds when it comes to this matter is Jewish people within Germany during the Second World War. One of the laws Hitler established early on in his leadership was one which limited the number of Jewish students in any one public school to 5 percent of the student population or less (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). This isolated many Jewish children from an easily accessible education. Although some families could afford private schooling, this was not a reality for all Jewish homes. This lack of Jewish presence within schools also allowed for the altercation of the education non-jewish children received in order to push Hitler’s agenda. “Educators taught students love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Nazi Germany’s government used improper education as a tool to brainwash German children into looking down on the groups not approved by Hitler. This substantiates the fact that education was used to put down people within society, the Germans did so both by refusing and altering the schooling of the children of Germany. Religious discrimination in education isn’t simply a thing of the past however, rather it's an ongoing struggle; even if it's not to the same extremes as in Nazi Germany.