The Journey to Becoming Educated

Tara Westover’s Memoir, Educated, tells the story of a young girl who’s desire for Education became an escape from her unpleasant family environment. Her family is what some might call survivalist or fundamentalist, believing in strict religious values and living a life very secluded from the rest of the world. Tara’s childhood involved little interaction with the outside world due to her lack of a public, or even proper education, as well as her father’s radical Mormon beliefs. She suffered much physical and emotional abuse and longed for an escape from it all. Educated follows Tara on her journey through life, that was completely transformed by education. While her childhood environment was not ideal, Tara Westover found the good in it. Her experiences as a child taught her the value of hard work, and pushed her to do well in school.

In her memoir, Westover portrays her father, Gene Westover, as a very industrious man. He owns a scrap yard so he partakes in activities that require a lot of effort. Wanting his children to really see that effort, he puts them to work in the scrap yard. In Educated, Westover describes her experiences there, hauling scrap and working machines. “I worked faster when I salvaged alone… I filled a bin with two thousand pounds; then, my arms aching, I ran to find dad” (Westover 63). The last line of this quote indicates Tara’s eagerness to show her father what she had done. She ran to find her father. She did not walk as if it were not important. She ran because she wanted to prove to him just how hard she could work. Carrying two thousand pounds of scrap and running while doing so, Tara searched for her father, hoping he would be pleased with her efforts. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for the 2019 Aspen Ideas Festival, Westover responds to a question about any values from her childhood that are a part of her life today. She notes that her parents were devoted to hard work and that she is grateful for them passing that on to her and her siblings (“Educated: A Conversation with Tara Westover,” 35:30-35:53). The junkyard is one of the major settings where Tara sees that good things come from hard work, like her father being proud of her, and continues to remember that throughout her life. Especially in her education. 

Tara’s decision to pursue an education was not an easy one. Her father, believing public school was an evil trick the government used to brainwash people (Westover 42,49), tried on many accounts to sway her decision (Westover 125, 137). Tara’s schooling up to that point had been almost nonexistent. Westover explains that any academic skill she or her siblings felt they needed, had to be learned in their own time (Westover 46). This is what motivated Tara to learn Algebra on her own and to teach herself all the skills she needed to know in order to pass the ACT, and attend Brigham Young University. Her journey doing so was not easy. She struggled with geometric concepts and theories, and the odds of her knowing enough to even pass the ACT, let alone go to college, were not great. Westover delineates these struggles when studying geometry: 

The misery began when I moved beyond the Pythagorean theorem to sine, cosine, and tangent. I couldn’t grasp such abstractions. I could feel the logic in them, could sense their power to bestow order and symmetry, but I couldn’t unlock it. They kept their secrets, becoming a kind of gateway beyond which I believed there was a world of law and reason. But I could not pass through the gate. (Westover 125) 

Westover’s choice of diction in this particular scene captures the severity of her own struggles and her desire to overcome them. Using words like “misery”, a more extreme synonym to bad, reveals how difficult the concepts of trigonometry are. However, Westover also depicts the understanding these concepts are supposed to supply. “I could feel the logic… could sense their power to bestow order and symmetry.” From words like “order,” “logic,” and “symmetry,” it can be inferred that the laws of sine, cosine, and tangent, are laws meant to help one gain more understanding of other trigonometry concepts. Tara knows this which is why she is trying so hard to “unlock” the mystery of geometry. Understanding this subject would result in her being one step closer to passing the ACT, attending college, and escaping the harsh realities of her childhood environment. 

While Tara Westover had never stepped foot in a classroom until she attended Brigham Young University at age 17, she was determined not to let that become a roadblock in her path to education. Westover depicts this with the following quote regarding her studies in math:

I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal- the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always… Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense. (Westover 124-125)

Westover takes an interesting approach with this quote, specifically when using the word “solace.” Meaning comfort in a time of distress, the word solace contradicts the puzzling concepts of Trigonometry. This irony does, however, contribute to the overall sense of comfort Tara finds in education, and the desire she has for it. The complexity of the subject pushes Tara to make sense of it. Westover depicts this in another scene of her memoir in which Tara is faced with a new challenge; Algebra. 

Algebra threatened to put an end to my scholarship. The professor spent every lecture muttering inaudibly as he paced in front of the chalkboard …I stopped sleeping. I stayed up late, twisting my hair into knots as I tried to wrest meaning from the textbook, then lying in bed and brooding over my notes. I developed stomach ulcers. (Westover 184)

Westover describes the actions of the professor with words like “muttering” and “pacing”, words that often indicate feelings of stress, anxiety, or nervousness. While they are used to describe her instructor, they still portray Tara’s feelings toward Algebra, and toward college. Her limited education as a child presented many obstacles in her education as a teenager and adult. She knew little of the subjects taught, which made her nervous at times. Westover shows this through the words and phrases such as “twisting my hair into knots” and “brooding,” words that again, portray Tara’s feelings of anxiety and stress. However, she uses this to her advantage, letting it motivate her to try harder. Westover uses the phrase “wrest meaning” to describe Tara’s determination to make sense of the textbook. She stayed up late, twisted her hair into knots, and even developed stomach ulcers all so she could have a proper and successful education. 

During her interview with Goldberg, Westover discusses her father’s view of education, which she believes in to this day, in response to an audience member’s question. “My dad had this thing that he said a lot which is that ‘you can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you’” (“Educated: A Conversation with Tara Westover,” 35:30-36:19). Westover proves this throughout her accounts of things she faced on the road to becoming educated, and her immense success afterwards. On the back-inside cover of Educated, Westover lists her academic achievements, stating that she graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and from there attended Cambridge University, where she earned her Doctorate degree in Philosophy. She did this despite knowing only the things she taught herself, at the start of her journey. Her story serves as a reminder to all that despite the barriers one might face during any part of their life, it is possible to succeed when one has the will and determination to do so.