Group Names:

Educated: Week 2 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator/Prioritizer: SOWMYA
● Recorder: MORGAN
● Connector: BRAYDEN
● Questioner: TEYA

Notes

1. In the Author’s Note, Westover cautions that this memoir is not about Mormonism or “any form of
religious belief,” and that she rejects a negative or positive correlation between believing or not
believing and being kind or not being kind. But her father Gene’s faith is a sort of character in this book,
informing how he sees the world. What did you make of Chapter 8, “Tiny Harlots,” which moves from
Gene’s distrust of Westover’s dance recital uniform to his pride over her singing in church?
- It’s because of his connection to religion. He doesn't really care about anything else outside of
religion. -Sowmya
- He’s been changing a lot, but it goes along with his normal style. The singing was for church, so
it aided him and the religion. -Brayden
- He has a lot of pride and has power control. He liked her singing because it made him feel like
the best father ever. -Teya
- It went against his beliefs of her being modest. -Sowmya
- We see how the mother starts to differentiate her opinions. -Teya
- She lied and tried to cover up her opinion because she had originally been okay with the
costumes until her husband freaked out and then she took his side. -Morgan

2. In Chapter 9, the anticlimactic passing of “Y2K” confirms that Tara’s home is a place ruled by her
father’s grand—but false—delusions. Tara is beginning to grasp the fact that her father doesn’t know
everything, and that his ideas and beliefs may actually be harmful. Tara’s father seems “smaller” to her
—she can see the “childlike” disappointment in his features as he reckons with the fact that the world
has continued spinning on. Why do you think this realization is happening now? What is it that is making
Tara start to question those beliefs and values?
- She’s growing out of being a child and believing everything her parents say. -Sowmya
- She’s gaining new experiences and learning new things. -Brayden
- She’s starting to see the results of her siblings who have moved out. -Sowmya
- She still questions all of the different things she’s experienced. -Brayden
- There are just little things that keep happening that disprove her dad and everything he’s said
that will happen. -Morgan
 - They’ve been preparing their entire life for this moment so it’s a feeling like what is my purpose
in life anymore. -Teya
- They were so worried about the government catching them, so just stepping outside and
realizing things are different than what they believed. -Brayden

3. By Chapter 12, “Fish Eyes,” we are introduced to Shawn’s abuse of Westover and the other women in
his life, which recurs throughout the book. When Westover starts crying over one of these early
incidents, she writes that she is crying from the pain, not from Shawn hurting her, and that she sees
herself as “unbreakable.” She also writes that his abuse not affecting her “was its effect.” Why is this
insight important?
- She feels powerless because that one part where she was looking in the mirror and was like I’m
weak and it isn’t affecting me and that’s bad. -Teya
- She’s usually pretty strong but she’s kind of offset that this is bothering her and has broken
through her barrier. -Sowmya
- He broke through her barrier because they did more together and he’d had more of an impact
on her. -Brayden
- She didn’t necessarily respect him but they’d had so many experiences together and done so
much that they had a closer relationship so it impacted her more. -Morgan
- It’s interesting to see how he becomes more controlling and she becomes older and more
mature. While she was younger, he was more affectionate. -Sowmya
- Shawn is starting to become more like his dad -Teya
- The majority of like early on before women’s rights everything was religiously based. -Brayden
- She starts to see that she’s a woman and she starts to see how she’s treated differently from her
brothers and the males around her. -Teya

4. In Chapter 14, Shawn has a major accident and gets a head injury. Tara explains that she has heard
conflicting accounts of Shawn's fall. At the end of the chapter, Tara talks about how she convinced
herself that "any cruelty on his part was entirely new. I can read my journals from his period and trace
the evolution--of a young girl rewriting her history. In the reality she constructed for herself nothing had
been wrong before her brother fell off that pallet" (131). Why do humans often "rewrite" their history?
Is it a function of memory? Does it have something to do with the brain? Why did Tara ultimately
"rewrite" it?
- It’s a way of coping because she didn’t want to realize why everything was happening and she
wanted to make an excuse about why everything was happening. -Teya
- It’s just human nature to try to justify something and make it more comfortable and it makes
her more comfortable to think that the only reason he acted like this was because of the brain
damage. -Sowmya
- He was so violent toward the family and the parts of his family that he was never violent
towards and it was just a stark contrast. - Brayden
- In religion the perfect family is the goal and she obviously doesn’t because everyone abuses her.
-Teya
- Religion’s not necessarily bad as long as you’re not extremists. -Sowmya
- Trauma can change your memories. -Mckay
- People make themselves think what they want to believe or need because they don’t want to
believe the bad things. -Morgan
5. Shawn is extremely controlling and manipulative when it comes to women such as Sadie and Tara.
HIs father doesn’t show those characteristics as extremely. Where did Shawn learn to treat women
like that? From her dad? The Bible? Is he Bipolar?
- Her dad doesn’t necessarily control his wife and family, but he manipulates them into doing
what he wants them to do by making them feel guilty for not doing what he tells them to do. -
Morgan
- He can also be learning from his dad’s teachings that women should be more modest and a
particular type of way -Sowmya
- He can be taking the idea that women should be a certain way to a further extent. - Sowmya
- Naturally he’s really prideful and he never learned anything else and he kind of learned the
opposite and never experienced any consequences.
- It’s a lot like the 1920’s cause there’s very little to no respect for women and men had all the
power.

Summary:

Through these chapters of the book we can see the influence of the ideas of religion on the family. We
can see the dad’s extreme connection to religion and it fueling many of his ideas, including why he was
more proud of his daughter singing rather than dancing. We can also see how the dad was able to fuel
the extremism of his son by exposing him to the ideas that women should be a particular type of way.
We can also see the transition of Tara to wanting to escape and establishing her place in the real world.
The dad’s false claim of y2k and the freedom of her siblings brought a new found realization of the
world outside the home. It will be interesting to see how she will continue to pursue making money and
pursuite education to move away from her home.