Educated: Week 2 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Roles

List any absent group members:

● HIgh Facilitator: Fatima Zaidi 4

● All powerful-Recorder: Derek Croft 3
● The Prioritizer : Abigail Giolas 2
● Connectotator/font chooser: Gage Wright 1
● Grand Questioner: Humzah 5

Notes: All personal please report to the hangar for briefing

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 is an interesting chapter that

describes her fathers personality, of
going from one way of thinking or acting
to the next willy nilly, Which kind of
illustrates her fathers bipolar
disorder,in the end though was an actual
father with a soft side for his children.
It also illustrates how he is a father,
one who cares about his children when all
else fails, but is burdened with beliefs
and conspiracies from the world.These
facts/interest tend to be a constant
battle with tara and the focus of the
novel as she grows and educates herself
and finds her views conflicting with her
fathers or her father not making sense.
Really this book is about a father who has
an unconventional way of educating his
children and as one grows up she finds his
way of education different and confusing
which appears to be building towards
conflict.

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 is growing up and her own ideas, values and opinions

are evolving. She is at the point where she no longer
takes everything she hears without question. Along with
this, she has also been through traumatic experiences
that make her question whether her parents always make
the right decisions. One example of this was when Luke
wasn’t taken to the hospital for his burns. She saw that
the parent’s were more concerned about their beliefs than
the children's well being. The father is also driving her
away with his reckless behavior causing her to question
the beliefs of her parents. Being exposed to more things
in the real world causes much of her changing values.

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?

This insight is important because it tells that reader that she is beginning to not care about
his opinion , SHe clearly wants to see him as a sort of surrogate father, like when he cracks her
neck. But increasingly she is finding that he is not the person she wishes him to be. Shawns
abuse causes her level of care for him to decrease. The effect being that his abuse did not
affect her is an important comparison on how her family's opinion is beginning to matter less
to her and that is scary. She is watching her perception and her hopes for the idea of her
family fade away.

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?

Humans often rewrite their history to protect themselves or others in the future to somewhat save face or
deny what actually happened. She wants to think that her brother was actually a good person. People often
don't want to accept that their family members can be bad people.
It is a function of memory because it is something that is influenced by your emotions. She rewrote it as a
step in her denial process. People want to believe that the people they’re close to, or even family are good.
Emotions can blur our memories and make it so that we see our memories differently. This definitely
applies in Tara’s case, she decided to rewrite history in order to make it seem like her father was doing the
right thing and was also making the right decisions. Also in the quote it says how the cruelty was new to
her, since it wasn’t something that she’s normally used to it was somewhat disbelief as well and that
disbelief also caused her to ‘“rewrite” history in order to remember the things the way she wanted to
remember them.

5. In chapter 8 Tara finds herself taking dance classes as well as learning the piano. She hides these
classes from her father knowing that if he found out Tara would no longer be able to participate in them.
After her recital her father catches on to Tara and forbids her from partaking in class. Instead she turns to
church hymns. Does she do this because she is in desperate need of fatherly attention? What is the
effect of her fathers disapproval on her own interest?

She is looking for something that her father will approve of, but also something that she likes. Her own
interests take a bit of a hit because she has to quit something that she really enjoys. This hit is caused by
her fathers suppression of her interests. Tara loses her sense of independence from her parents. The dance
classes provided Tara an escape from her religious based household. Because tatras interests were taken
away from her she feels empty, she no longer feels like herself thus pushing her to seek parental approval.

Summary:
We achieved an understanding of what happens as we

grow older, get exposed to more, and develop our own

opinions. This idea of growing and developing was seen

through tara's experiences in the book as she grows

apart from her family, or rather educates away from

her family, these chapters highlight the changes a

growing child who finds their ideals in conflict with

that of their parents, and that this story at least so

far is a story of a girl who is beginning to understand

that the world is not what she thought it to be and is

beginning to question her ‘education’ under her

parents.