I think there must’ve been something about their childhood that gave them a degree of toughness and helped them persevere. Three doctorates in one family would be remarkable even for a more “conventional” household. Of the seven Westover siblings, three of them-including Tara-left home, and all three have earned Ph.D.s. Whatever their ideas are, they pursue them. It’s clear that her whole family, including her mom and dad, is energetic and talented. Tara is never cruel, even when she’s writing about some of her father’s most fringe beliefs. Their belief systems benefit from their separateness, and you’re forced to be either in or out.īut unlike Wild, Wild Country-which revels in the strangeness of its subjects- Educated doesn’t feel voyeuristic. Both explore people who remove themselves from society because they have these beliefs and knowledge that they think make them more enlightened. It reminded me in some ways of the Netflix documentary Wild, Wild Country, which I recently watched. (Full disclosure: she was a Gates Scholar, which I didn’t even know until I reached that part of the book.)Įducated is an amazing story, and I get why it’s spent so much time on the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Eventually, she earned her doctorate in intellectual history from Cambridge University. She had to teach herself algebra and trigonometry and self-studied for the ACT, which she did well enough on to gain admission to Brigham Young University. As a result, she didn’t step foot in a classroom until she was 17, and major medical crises went untreated (her mother suffered a brain injury in a car accident and never fully recovered).īecause Tara and her six siblings worked at their father’s junkyard from a young age, none of them received any kind of proper homeschooling. He believed doomsday was coming, and that the family should interact with the health and education systems as little as possible. Her dad had very non-mainstream views about the government. Tara was raised in a Mormon survivalist home in rural Idaho.
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