I just read this book and it’s so intense. Your non biased review really made me happy. You wrote an amazing article and it just confirms what I believed when I first read “educated”…. Tara, you have led an astonishing life. Scary and unbelievable.. I hear you and I wo We all have known people who are mentally ill to some extent, and over 90% of the mentally ill don’t believe they are mentally ill. They think there is a problem with many of the people they have conflict with. Their lives are filled with conflict, but it is always someone else causing the conflict. This seams to be the truth with Val too. Tony Westover: Westover's oldest brother and first child of their parents. He is noted only as working with their father at the scrapyard. He is 12 years older than Tara. Using the word “crazy” is so hard to hear because it’s insulting to everyone with this illness even though it manifests in different ways. Many people with diagnosed schizophrenia that take medication early on and consistently never experience another psychotic episode again. Unfortunately, since Val was unmedicated, his actions to his family are abusive. Whether claims of him almost crushing her in the junk yard are true or not, his paranoia of the government and medical establishments created an unsafe environment for his family.

Some of those problems may be legitimate; the family has an attorney they actively use. Val’s refusal to cooperate in these legal matters, which we all have to abide by, seems to be a direct result of what Tara tells us is his paranoia of the government and anything to do with it. No scientific studies, however, with controlled environments, study groups, and supporting data were cited to prove successful treatments shared in the book. Therefore, medical opinions expressed in the book are anecdotal.

Mental Illness

I have often argued that I would not let any teacher into a school unless – as a minimum – they had read, carefully and well, the three great books on education: Plato’s Republic, Rousseau’s Émile and Dewey’s Democracy and Education. There would be no instrumental purpose in this, but the struggle to understand these books and the thinking involved in understanding them would change teachers and ultimately teaching. As society, the rules we agree and adhere to are only as good as our ability to watch out for the victims in that same society and it occurs to me that there are community members who could have or should have spoken up for all of the children long before the last child was pushed outside of her own family for recognising the dangers of the twisted relationships around her.

Erin: One of Shawn's ex-girlfriends. Westover reaches out to her in hopes she will help corroborate Westover's timeline of Shawn's abuse. While "helping" her, Erin also communicates with Faye, saying that Westover is "demonizing" Shawn. As to your concern that Tara uses footnotes to indicate where there is no one clear agreed upon account, I believe that in no way weakens the veracity of her narrative. As the author, Tara is entirely within her rights to simply present her own point of view: it is her memoir. A memoir is a work of memory. She is not required to obtain approval from her family. As an academic, she has gone above and beyond the standard for memoirs by including the possibilities of others’ recollections differing from her own.

Enjoyed This Article? Join My Book Club.

Tara remembers the computer as having limited software options and no internet access. A photo in LaRee’s book shows a satellite-type dish installed on their home in the 1990s for internet services (p. 86). Tara was a junior at BYU in 2007. So the years indicate she would have had technology in the home for her studies if the service was current and paid for. Thank you for your comment. I would like to point out, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that there is NEVER a time when we are counseled to isolate our children from others, especially when harmful practices are occurring in the home. On behalf of myself and every other church member who is appalled by the story of Educated, I wish to make this clear. Really interesting review, thank you! I found Educated very interesting, understanding that with all memoirs, lots of it is left to the authors memories. I’m curious to read Educating now too! I want to say one small thing about midwifery. Home birth midwives with no training is very different than certified home birth midwives, who go through years of schooling and training. They are medical professionals who are qualified to deliver babies at home for women with low-risk pregnancies. They are trained to determine if there are any risks with the pregnancy that would require a hospital delivery. There are also certified nurse midwives who work in hospitals, this is incredibly common. So “midwifery” as a general term doesn’t distinguish between the differences between the various types of midwives. I am a labor and delivery nurse in a hospital, and unfortunately many of the complications we see in labor and delivery are caused by the hospital protocols and practices. I could go into lots of detail on this but I think it’s too long for a comment. Of course there are many legitimate complications that occur! But I firmly believe after years of working in delivery rooms in top hospitals that low-risk pregnancies are safer delivering at home. Just thought I’d add another perspective to that point. Thank you again for this thorough and thoughtful review.

I agree….I haven’t seen/felt a misrepresentation of The Church of Latter Day Saints either in Educated. Her deep processing of all that she endured including the intimidation, bullying, gaslighting, physical abuse, and manipulation is what led her to fight for her eventual triumphant escape in to a new life. I feel that her deep faith and respect for God our Creator is what cultivated in her the will to fight, and the fortitude to try to make sense of all that happened to her. She drew upon world history and the study of historians themselves, to make sense of other cultures and peoples. Ultimately her own personal journey was an exploration of life and faith. Her difficult journey and her deep faith in the face of adversity, has yielded within her blessings of comtemplation, scholarship, and knowledge of history, culture and human nature. We are witnessing the evidence of her truth in the fruits of her journey, the triumphant success of her career, her wonderful writing and advanced educational degrees. Her story was captivating and inspiring. In response to her daughter’s therapy sessions, LaRee feels there’s a “high likelihood the therapist was manipulating her memories” (p. 290). She also encouraged older children to teach younger children (p. 93-94). With her busy career as a midwife and her own illnesses to tend, she was gone from the family often. This fact should be considered when Tara, the youngest of the children, insists she didn’t receive an adequate education growing up. I am not a member of the LDS and did not see the book as presenting all of you folks as a “bunch of kooks”. I saw this as a story about a family. It would make as much sense to think it makes all Idahoans look like a “bunch of kooks”. Tara presented the town folks and the people at BYU as more normal.

It is also interesting that the business was built taking plants by robbing nature and now I think it is just international trade in chemicals which drives it.