Educated By Tara Westover

Education is prominent from the moment you are born. It is what occupies your time from the ages of 4-18. But for Tara Westover, she started at 15. The book Educated by Tara Westover is a fascinating book about a young girl who didn’t grow up in a school, with no identification of herself. She grew up with a dysfunctional family in the mountains of Idaho. Her parents forced their Mormon ways upon her and her siblings, as she struggled to find her identity, as well as finding a new love for education. This book develops the theme that the power of education can be the key to success and should be kept from the curriculum.

Tyler Westover, Tara’s brother, struggles with his own conflict with education along with Tara. Tyler is actually the one

She uses her memories and past experiences to talk herself into it, because she knows that it’s what Tyler would have wanted. Tara is in the junkyard at the time, working with her dad. She recalls back to the time Tyler told his parents about going to college. Tara illustrates, “{I} {found} myself imagining the classrooms where Tyler {is} spending his days. My interest {grows} more acute with every deadening hour in the junkyard, until one day I {have} the bizarre thought: that I should enroll in the public school”(Westover 61). Tara finds a voice in her head that tells her to take a leap out of this box that her parents had put her in. Her wanting to explore the education system, tells us that she wants to get out of the scrapyard, and find success in a new world. She wants education to guide her to a better future. She also brings up a fascinating point, “Dad was trying to keep his children from being overly interested in school and books - from being seduced by the Illuminati, like Tyler had been”(Westover 61). Now, Tara leads a very isolated life, causing her to only be exposed to the little family she has left in the house. Tara’s father is consumed by his thoughts that education is the devil's work and believes that it can completely dissipate your morals and principles provided by Mormon life. On the other hand, Tara’s grandparents are among the first people to show her that there can