Sandhya Senthilkumar

Period 3 online

Who is considered as a well-educated person?

One of the major themes of the book, “Educated,” written by Tara Westover, was the

power of knowledge and education. It made her to realize her self-worth and made her into the

being which she is at present, having her own identity. She considers the past difficulties and

scars of her life to be a part of the ‘education,’ she received. Throughout the memoir, Tara

reveals the importance of getting exposed to other peoples’ points of view, which was the way

she got to evaluate herself, modify her beliefs, and establish her self-identity. A well-educated

person is not someone who is an all-rounder that knows about every topic or someone who is

better than the other and can recite a whole book, but rather a being who has the interest and gets

exposed to various points of views and truths on a subject and evaluates it in order to build their

own beliefs, thoughts, and identity. Education gives a person the ability to think for themselves

and not be under the influence of any other person.

Tara Westover, in her book ‘Educated,’ talks about how getting to know other peoples’

perspectives on the same matter opened up her mind to build her own beliefs and not have the

thoughts of other people, like her father, to be instilled on her mind. When Tara goes to Harvard

for a fellowship, her parents come to visit. They talk about how to “reconvert” her, with Gene

taking them to a temple and lecturing Tara for hours. Tara refutes their wishes and refuses to

accept the blessing from her father. Angry, her parents leave almost immediately afterward with

Gene telling Tara that her room is filled with an evil presence.  She later says, “Everything I had
worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and

experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct

my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories,

many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create,” (Westover 304) This quote

represents one of the consequences of Tara being educated: Breaking away from her father’s

points of views and speaking for herself. She, after being exposed to the outside world through

her education, knows that her father’s words weren’t the absolute and the only one to exist. She

had the right to develop her own and refute others. Being an educated person allowed her to take

control of her mind and explore other people’ views to modify and correct herself along the way.

Taking the interest to explore other people’s points of view also helped her to correct her beliefs

on feminism. “Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility,

of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never

had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say:

whatever you are, you are woman.” (Westover 259) Tara reads this quote from John Mill saying

that nothing conclusive can be well-known about the nature of women. Tara had been raised to

believe that women should not have dreams/ambitions, should be obedient and inferior to men,

like the women in Tara’s household are to her father, and should not question male authority. As

a result, she only grew up knowing that men and women had different expectations and roles and

that women had to follow the men. However, Tara knew from watching her mother, and from

her own life experiences, that women can be different from the portrayed one by being smart,

capable, and strong. This contrast left Tara in a dilemma and made her feel ashamed. She

thought that there must be something wrong with her because she cannot reconcile and match

what she has been told about women with how she feels about actually being a woman. While
searching about what past thinkers and writers thought about this issue, Tara finds the above

quotation from Mill which was comforting to her because it gives her space for creating her own

identity and self-definition. 

“My life was 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.” (Westover 197) Tara talked

this dialogue after she started attending college. After attending BYU, and after getting to know

other opinions and views on a subject, Tara realized that her father’s opinions were the only one

to exist. She understood that the thoughts and beliefs she had were those that her father had

instilled and not hers. Her father’s views also weren’t the truth and instigated Tara to develop

beliefs of her own. She particularly understands this when her professors share knowledge about

World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, and Westover discovers the historical truth of

these happenings. This act of her listening to others’ opinions, perspectives and world views

allowed her to evaluate and construct her own thoughts; this was the act that, according to

Westover, made her well-educated, not because of the act of getting a degree. “The decisions I

made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a

changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation.

Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education” (Westover 329) The ‘changed person’

was the Tara that refused her father’s blessings, not the Tara who was submissive to Gene. The

education she got was the access to different perspectives and ideas that challenge received

views which allowed her to build her own thoughts and beliefs.

At the launch of her memoir ‘Educated’, Tara Westover spoke to Professor Runciman

and said, “University should be a place where you really experience different people. It should

not be about people reading the same texts and having the same interpretations. There should not
be one dominant way of thinking about things.” (Westover) Exploring different opinions,

interpretations, and fields of study is what education is about. There should be no conformity in

the act of learning. The same views are shared by educationalist Ken Robinson. In his ted talk,

“Do schools kill creativity?” Robinson stresses on the importance of giving equal value to all

subject from mathematics to dance. “We stigmatize mistakes in school, mistakes are the worst

thing you can make. We are educating our kids out of their creative capacities.” “If you're not

prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.” (Robinson) Having some

kind of conformity in school rejects mistakes and makes the opinions/views other than the one

based on conformity to be denied, making everyone to be forced to have the same views and

interpretation. According to Robinson, nothing can be learned from this type of education.

Students should be allowed to explore and reflect on themselves. Education based on conformity

does not make a person to be well-educated. In Plato’s “The allegory of the cave”, the prisoner

who left the cave to explore the outside world and know the truth about the shadows was the

well-educated one, not the prisoners who refused to deflect from conformity due to ignorance.

The prisoner who left the cave to see the outside world, being accustomed to seeing only the

shadows for most of their life, suddenly seeing the light brought confusion. This was the same

thing experienced by Tara when she discovered the truth about the Holocaust. The act of the

prisoner taking curiosity and investigating the real-life object that were once represented by the

shadows symbolizes the act of taking curiosity to explore other perspectives and views and

develop oneself to be educated.

Knowing more about something than another person doesn’t make a person to be well-

educated. Being educated is all about getting to know others views/perspectives and assessing it

to define oneself’ s beliefs, thoughts and actions.

 Work cited

Westover, Tara. Educated: A Memoir. First Edition, Random House, 2018.

“What Does It Mean to Be Educated? | Gates Cambridge.” Gates Cambridge -, 1 Mar. 2018,

www.gatescambridge.org/about/news/what-does-it-mean-to-be-educated.

“Do Schools Kill Creativity?” TED Talks, uploaded by TEDxTalks, 27 June 2006,

www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en.