Group Names:

Educated: Week 3 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator/Prioritizer: Morgan
● Recorder: Sowmya
● Connector: Jordan
● Questioner: Brayden

Notes

1. By part two of “Educated,” Westover has decided she wants to get an education, has found a way to
take the ACT, and has left the mountain to go to college at BYU, despite her father’s objections. In her
first class at college, Westover recounts not knowing what the word “holocaust” means. Why is this
moment significant? (Chapter 17)

J: It shows that the family is out of touch in teaching their kids important things
S: It serves as an example providing insight into how much she will learn in college given that she
doesn’t know this common topic
M: Up till now she thought the parents taught enough, this is the first big moment she realized they
taught nothing
B: The dad wouldn’t really be able to give a good education
S: Shows the incompetence of the ACT and how it is not able to represent the true knowledge
J: The Holocaust and the Maus is about the Holocaust

2. Over the course of this book, the Westover family deals with a number of accidents: Westover’s
brother Tyler falling asleep and driving off the road, Westover’s brother Luke catching on fire, and later,
a very serious accident for their father. Early on, Westover writes that she thinks “all the decisions that
go into making a life — the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce
any single event.” What do you think she meant by this? How does this insight apply to your own life?

B: She thinks that it is a collection of events and influence that caused the event not just blaming a
singular person for the events
M: Make good decisions for yourself and for others
J: She worked hard to get to college and education, collection of choices that affects her life
M: Like how her dad chose not to make good choices and it accumulated to his current character
S: It shows how one choice is not going to influence our whole life holistically since there are many
choices that are being made
3. In chapter 18, Tara’s struggles run deeper than social anxiety. The way she has been raised is in direct
opposition to the way those around her have grown up, and the pressure to learn a whole new set of
social skills—and keep up with her studies and finances, as well—wears on her as the semester goes by.
Tara is learning that education is more than just book-learning. What might this mean? What important
things have you learned that were not from book-learning?

J: Tara having experiences she never had since she used to be closed off, it’s more than just textbook
M: She is learning more about life than about the subject
S: How to interact with people and social skills, this might be one of the reasons book-smart people
don’t have social skills
B: Some of the most important things in life we don’t read about, the daily things are necessary for
building up to the things that are book smart, like driving and communication
J: We learn things everyday, Tara is learning a lot everyday not being held back
S: She’s thrown into things of being adult, I’m surprised that she has stayed afloat
J: She didn’t expect things to be different, since it is so drastically different

4. By Chapter 22, Westover writes that her life was often “narrated for me by others. Their voices were
forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
What is the significance of this realization? Do you identify at all with this?

S: It connects to the idea of how education is important and why emphasize on education those that
may not have as much access since it gives them more power to do things
M: she was always told what to do and never fought back against it, only Shawn was the person that
fought back. Similar type of situation with Shawn
J: Now that she has her own she is learning that she can make her own choices and can stand up for
herself
B: She is going through the things her older brother did and experiencing similar things, she is seeing
that she can be looked up to in the same way that he is
S: She also previously didn’t have a lot of sources to escape the control off her family

5. What ways do you feel like you would be “left in the dark” if you were to move into a new culture or
community? Are there any ways that even within our culture and world today we are still “in the dark?”

M: Each community has their own customs and had their own way of living, even with differences in
cities with different communities
S: Connecting to those that moved from communities of other countries they may not understand what
is accepted and feel that they have been “left in the dark”
B: Even within our own community with a diverse amount of people, everything about how we treat
people can be different in different communities. For example abuse of wives in different areas. How
morals change
J: With Utah it has different culture than everywhere else, and how the community is different with the
church and laws, you would think is unusual is you never came here before

Summary:
How important education is not just in the sense of subjects and how much we are able to learn about
life skills that don't just go in our gpa. It also presents the importance of how important it is to go to
different places and experience different things to broaden our understanding and knowledge of things.
It also presents the importance of our raising and how much they influence our practices and knowledge
of the world. They provide the basis of our learning.