Educated: Week 1 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Norms

Make a list of your group norms below.

- Be respectful to everyone
- Stay on track
- Read the book/be prepared before the discussion

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator: grace hansen

● Recorder: Amber Parker
● Prioritizer: grace hansen
● Connector: Tianna Brown
● Questioner: Michael Chen

Notes

1. Educated starts with an epigraph from Virginia Woolf: “The past is beautiful because one never
realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the
present, only the past.” What do you think Woolf meant by this? Why do you think Tara Westover chose
to begin her memoir this way?
- The book has deep and terrifying concepts, but even though it is all of these negative things, she
still finds beauty in her past and in her life
- Realizes what things actually were (like her dad's mental illness) in the future, hindsight
- In the future, you can recollect emotions
- Kids don't realize what is happening in their life but realize the importance of that as they grow
up
- Just accepted as fact as a child, maybe has some questions, but gets the answers to these
questions when they grow up

2. In the first pages of Educated, we are introduced to the mountain in rural Idaho where the Westover
family lives, described as a dark, beautiful, and commanding form in a “jagged little patch of Idaho.” How
does this setting inform the family’s experience?
- Country folk, but to the extreme
- There is a reason that they live in the rural country, rather than the city
- Introduces their family's extreme paranoid beliefs
- The Native American influence on their lives (Indian princess)
 - Not exactly primitive knowledge, but it is extremely localized and specialized for the
specific environment that they live in
- Adopt beliefs and customs similar to many native tribes
- Mother's muscle testing, herbs, spiritual guidance
- Dark and beautiful
- Represents her early life before education
- She was “in the dark” when it comes to education, but she still finds beauty in that
darkness

3. We are also introduced early in the book to the standoff at Ruby Ridge, a 1992 gunfight between FBI
agents and U.S. marshals and a heavily armed family on an isolated homestead. How does this incident
cast a shadow over the Westover parents and children, and the survivalism that characterizes their
upbringing?
- It's why her dad is paranoid about the government, a story to give backing to his insanity and
paranoia
- Her dad never finishes a story
- Makes her more paranoid
- Makes the children overall more scared of the government
- Scares them to not go to school
- Story to make them listen to their parents
- Introduce fear to create submission
- Justification for the paranoia, a story for fear
- Influences the rest of their life
- Bipolar disorder of the dad, takes it to the extreme

4. In Chapter 5, Westover’s brother Tyler announces that he’s going to college, something none of her
other siblings have done. Why does Westover’s father, Gene, object to formalized education? How does
Tyler’s leaving have an impact on Westover?
- Her dad is very paranoid about the government and its intentions, so is scared to send their
children to the government-run school
- Threat to his kids, makes them scared about going to school by using stories
- Religious reasons to object to formal education
- Because she was a girl, her father objected more to her getting a formal education
- More controlling of women
- Father is withdrawn
- Tyler leaving makes her curious about going to school
- Gives the option to her, makes it open in her mind
- Sets an example
- Curiosity
- She had to fill in his job, which creates more family pressure on her

5. Two explicit (she literally writes it out) examples of cycles referenced in the book are with her family’s
farm life and the surrounding nature (prologue), and her grandmother and mother’s break in relation to
the break between herself and her mother (end of chapter 3). How else does this motif manifest itself in
the first 6 chapters?
- Grandma was trying to guide her to go to school and have a normal life, and when she died she
realized how much her grandma knew about her and her situation
 - Grandma wants her to break the cycle, but with her mom and grandmas distancing, the
cycle is continued
- Sets up the motif of continuing cycles
- Dad's obsession with time

Summary: The family environment that she was raised in sets up her point of view as a child,
leading to how it has been influenced by people in her life. It shows how her family has shaped
and molded her, highlighting the cracks in this mold as they start to form. Her family is very
influential in her beliefs as a child, and as more and more people in her life break away from this
family, she sees more and more of the imperfections it has.