Vasyl Lenchak Professor Valerie Bronstein ENGWR 300 25 June 2024 Thirst for Education Education, throughout history, has been a key for unlocking human potential. Knowledge exposes people to different perspectives, encourages them to get along with each other, and makes them more tolerant of others. Tara Westover’s “Educated” tells the story of a young girl named Tara with a certain background. Raised in a particular community, she was not allowed to attend public school. Despite this seemingly disadvantage, Tara’s thirst for knowledge allowed her to embrace education, which later became a transformative force, leading to her intellectual awakening and questioning established beliefs. Although my upbringing was not as limited as Tara’s, I …show more content…
The constant “strange noises,” “shrieking sirens,” and “hushed chatter” on the sidewalk in Birmingham irritated her, which says that she expected a quieter life in the city (213). With family's interpretation of Mormonism and gentiles, Tara expected to live among the same believers as she was herself. This is indicated by the fact that she was very embarrassed when she saw her roommate with bare shoulders. Dad called them gentiles and I had always avoided getting too near them, as if their immorality might be caught. Now there is one in my house” (214). At that time she lacked knowledge but had established beliefs that contradicted the reality in which she found herself. Tara was homeschooled and lacked formal traditional education, which led to an academic failure at the beginning of her educational path. The fact that she got confused when she entered the wrong class and the professor said “You don’t belong here” (215) and “Then I checked my course schedule and, for the first time, noticed the numbers next to the course names” (215) tells us about her resourcefulness. Despite the initial confusion, she found necessary information within the resources available to her (the