Book SummaryEducated, by Tara Westover

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Educated

Educated is the autobiographical story of Tara Westover’s journey from being the child of anti-government, anti-science, and religious fundamentalist Mormon parents to becoming a Cambridge- and Harvard-educated PhD. It takes us through her struggles growing up in a survivalist household on a remote mountain in Idaho, and her eventual liberation from her family’s ideology, religious fanaticism, and cycle of physical and emotional abuse. Eventually, Tara graduated from Brigham Young University and went on to an academic career that took her to Cambridge and Harvard.

But Educated (2018) is more than a story about overcoming adversity or rising up from poverty. It’s a story about learning to think for yourself. For most of her life, Tara was told what to believe, with no room for dissent or debate. These commands were given extra weight because her father imbued them with religious authority: He claimed to be speaking for God.

It’s also a story of self-liberation, and not just because she went to college and came to reject the ideas that had informed her view of society. Her most revolutionary act was to use her intellect to illuminate her view of the world and to accept herself as an autonomous human being with the right to make her own decisions.

Childhood on the Mountain

Tara Westover was one of seven children born into a family of anti-government survivalists who lived on Buck’s Peak, a remote mountain in Idaho. A Mormon fundamentalist, her father, Gene, espoused an extreme ideology that welded strands from the militia, anti-vaccination, and evangelical Christian movements. He had free reign to impose his beliefs on the family from this isolated location, without interference from the outside world.

Gene believed he could communicate directly with God, and he took the text of the Bible and the Book of Mormon literally. He also believed he was a prophet, and that the end of the world was at hand. To prepare his family, Gene insisted on stockpiling homemade canned goods, clothing, gold, and military-grade weapons.

Lack of Education and Basic Comforts

Gene’s faith made him an opponent of all forms of education other than homeschooling. He believed public school was a government conspiracy to indoctrinate children and lure them from the path of God. So, Gene relegated Tara and her siblings to a homeschooling curriculum designed by his wife, Faye. There were no tests or exams, and Tara learned to read and write mostly by studying the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Because of this, Tara had enormous gaps in her knowledge—she barely knew elementary math and was ignorant of key historical facts.

When Tara was eight, her schooling ceased altogether as Gene’s ideology grew even more extreme. Tara tried to keep up her education on her own, reading whatever books were still lying around and writing rudimentary essays on the doctrines of faith and sacrifice. Even though the writing in those books was difficult, Tara now sees that she was learning a critical skill: the patience to read things she could not yet understand.

It wasn’t just the school system that Tara’s father rejected. Gene believed in living “off the grid” and maintaining strict self-sufficiency. He also believed the federal government was out to get him for defying the “brainwashing” being done in schools. He detested what he saw as the “frivolities” of modern life, like interior carpeting, wallpaper, and even the most basic forms of hygiene. Tara recalls learning early in life that to him, “frivolities” were false idols worshipped by unbelievers.

Lack of Medicine

Tara’s father was also hostile to what he termed the “medical establishment,” believing that modern medicine was a plot cooked up by the government to poison people. Gene believed that God had provided all the medicine one would ever need in the form of natural herbs, so he and his wife were committed to practicing alternative medicine. Faye considered herself a gifted healer, so she treated the family’s colds, sore throats, and even severe cuts, bruises, burns, and concussions with homemade herbal concoctions. As Tara recalls, these remedies were almost never effective, and they subjected her and her siblings to needless and easily preventable suffering.

Nevertheless, Faye’s pursuit of alternative medicine won her a reputation as a healer among those in the area who similarly rejected medical science. When Tara was a child, Faye became an assistant to a midwife named Judy, helping her with home births for local families. Tara soon came to see just how risky and frightening unlicensed midwifery could be. Faye shared stories with Tara of births in which the mother suffered from uncontrollable hemorrhaging, or where the baby had the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. Despite her misgivings, Faye eventually took over as head midwife for the area.

A Life-Changing Accident

The family took annual trips to Arizona in the winter to visit Gene’s parents. This was usually to combat Gene’s intense bouts of depression, during which he would take to bed for days at a time. During one of these trips, Gene abruptly declared that the family would head back to Idaho immediately. The family began their journey home in the early evening, so they’d do most of the 12-hour drive overnight. No one wore a seat belt, and Gene made Tara’s 17-year-old brother Tyler drive the entire way.

Around 6 a.m., Tyler fell asleep at the wheel. The resulting crash was horrific. In addition to the family’s broken bones, lost teeth, severe bruises, and emotional trauma, the car was now surrounded by downed power lines. Only when a farmer who witnessed the crash called the power company to deactivate the lines could the family emerge. Everyone survived and made it back to Buck’s Peak, but the crash was a defining moment for Tara.

The Aftereffects

Tara recalls that **her mother was never quite the same...

Educated Summary Shortform Introduction

Educated is an autobiographical journey. It takes us through Tara Westover’s struggles growing up in a survivalist household on a remote mountain in Idaho, and her eventual liberation from her family’s extreme ideology, religious fanaticism, and cycle of physical and emotional abuse. Eventually, Tara manages to matriculate at Brigham Young University, where she excels and goes on to a prestigious academic career that takes her to Cambridge and Harvard.

Her story exposes us to a community with which most readers wouldn’t be familiar: the world of extreme, anti-government, American survivalists among whom Tara grew up. Her childhood was marked by:

• A total lack of formal education, stemming from her father’s paranoia that “socialist” government agents were using the school system to “brainwash” the population.
• Near-total isolation from the world outside her family and the small mountain community where they lived—Tara didn’t even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old. On paper, she didn’t even exist.
• **Religious fundamentalism, misogyny, and messianic...

Educated Summary The Mountain, Part One

Tara Westover was one of seven children born into a family of hardline, anti-government survivalists who lived on a remote mountain in rural Idaho. A Mormon fundamentalist, her father was an adherent (and active promoter) of an extreme ideology that welded together strands from the militia, anti-vaccination, and evangelical Christian movements.

His adherence to these views subjected his family to a number of privations.

• Tara was born at home and didn’t see a doctor or nurse until her adulthood.
• She didn’t attend any school growing up, public or private.
• She didn’t have a birth certificate, and the state of Idaho had no official record of her existence until she was issued a Delayed Certificate of Birth at the age of nine.

The Voice of God

The family lived at the base of Buck’s Peak, a mountain in Franklin County, Idaho. Her father, Gene, had free reign to impose his beliefs on the rest of the family from this remote, isolated location, free from interference (or intervention) from the outside world.

(Shortform note: Westover has changed the names of the principal characters in the book, since they are real people, many of whom vigorously contest the...

Educated Summary The Mountain, Part Two

Growing up in the Westover home, Tara experienced more than just ideological extremism. Her parents’ beliefs had real-world consequences for the children, which frequently put Tara and her siblings in grave danger. Whether it was through near-death experiences in car crashes or maimings in the junkyard where Gene forced his children to work, it was a constant struggle for survival on Buck’s Peak.

Happy Birthday

Tara had no birth certificate, because she hadn’t been born in a hospital or delivered by a licensed medical professional with a witness present. Her family had chosen not to register her birth with the courthouse in town. Officially, the state of Idaho had no record of her existence. Even today, her actual date of birth cannot be determined with 100 percent certainty.

When Tara was nine, Faye decided that she should obtain birth certificates for all her children. This proved more difficult than expected, as she had no documents that could prove her children were, in fact, her own. The only documents for Tara were her christening and her baptismal records, each of which had a different birth date. Eventually, Tara was only issued a Delayed Certificate of...

Educated Summary The Mountain, Part Three

Tara’s final years living full-time under her parents’ roof brought new challenges. As she matured into her teenage years, she saw that there would be new attempts by the highly patriarchal men in her life to control her body and sexuality. She also experienced a painful lesson in how crucial a role violence played in her family dynamic.

Song and Dance

By the time Tara was 11, she knew she wanted to get away from the junkyard. Following her older sister Audrey’s lead, Tara decided to get a job in town.

She went to the local gas station and posted a card advertising her services as a babysitter. Soon, she had her calendar filled with babysitting jobs. Of course, she was available at all times since she didn’t go to school herself. These jobs gave Tara a strong feeling of accomplishment and some real autonomy. She had some money of her own, where she’d had none before.

Through another babysitting contact, Tara learned of a dance class that took place in the back of the local gas station/convenience store. When she showed up to participate, she saw that this new activity would clash with her father’s stern, paternalistic morals regarding women and sexuality. She...

Shortform Exercise: Breaking Down Your Background

Explore what made your upbringing unique.

In a few sentences, describe something you were taught to believe growing up.

Educated Summary Higher Education, Part One

Life at college would bring new opportunities, as well as new challenges for Tara. She began wriggling free from her family’s dogma, but was constantly reminded of just how profound an effect Buck’s Peak had on her. Her new experiences at college would force Tara to look at her old life on Buck’s Peak in a whole new light.

Fish Out of Water

On New Year’s Day, Faye drove Tara to her new life at BYU. What struck Tara immediately was the noise in Provo, Utah, where the university was located. Growing up on Buck’s Peak, she had been accustomed to constant silence. Here, however, there was noise from crosswalk signals, motor traffic, and people on the streets. It was her first small taste of culture shock.

She received an even bigger shock when she met her roommates. One of them wore clothes that her father would have surely decried as frivolous and indecent, like tank tops with spaghetti straps and pink pajama bottoms with “Juicy” written on the back. They also shopped on the Sabbath and, overall, appeared to lead highly secular lives.These were the exact kind of women that her parents and Shawn had told her to stay away from.

Tara quickly clashed with these...

Educated Summary Higher Education, Part Two

Tara’s academic career was about to take her to new heights of intellectual and personal discovery, taking her to places she’d never dreamed she would go. But the chaos and extremism of Buck’s Peak would continue to exert a powerful hold.

Tara’s Wish is Granted

Even back at BYU, the spectre of Shawn’s abuse hung over Tara. It became clear to the bishop at the university that Tara was experiencing severe emotional trauma. She was also suffering from an infected tooth, for which she could not afford to seek treatment. Over the course of several meetings with him, she told him the truth about everything her brother had been doing to her over the years.

The bishop told her not to return home and assured her that the church would help her pay her rent and get the necessary funds together to remain in school and earn her degree. His only condition was that she honor her promise to never again work for her father. Tara was incredulous. How could she afford tuition and housing without working in the junkyard during the summer and on holiday breaks?

The bishop’s solution was simple: a government grant. This, he explained, was different than a student loan. Tara wouldn’t...

Shortform Exercise: Examining Education

Think about the challenges of education.

Describe a time where you felt ignorant or stupid for not knowing something that everyone else around you seemed to know.

Educated Summary Self-Emancipation, Part One

Tara continued to excel as a student, liberating her mind from the ideological constraints into which it had been placed for her entire life. She was thinking for herself and exploring her mind’s true potential. But she would soon be forced to confront the true ugliness of her family’s inner dynamics.

Brave New World

When Tara returned to Cambridge as a graduate student through the Gates Scholarship, her status was different. She was not a guest, or a visitor. She was a member of the university.

Tara was learning about Isaiah Berlin’s concepts of negative and positive liberty. Negative liberty was the more basic concept, a freedom from external constraints. If you weren’t physically prevented from taking action, you enjoyed negative liberty. Positive liberty, however, was defined by a mastery of the self. This meant having control over one’s mind, a freedom from irrationality and paranoia, and all forms of self-policing.

Tara realized that it was this positive liberty that had been denied to her by her family. She had not had freedom of thought, but had instead been instructed to believe in irrational and paranoid lies, which had stunted her intellectual...

Educated Summary Self-Emancipation, Part Two

Tara would finally be forced to choose between her new life and her old. She had to, at last, reconcile her obligations to her family with her commitments to society and—most importantly—to herself.

Distorted Reality

Amid all this turmoil, Tara won a visiting fellowship at Harvard. But the weight of her recent family trauma hung over this accomplishment like a dark cloud. Never had she felt so gloomy and indifferent about a piece of good news.

Tara fell into a deep crisis of reality. If her entire family had branded her as a liar, how could she truly trust her own reality? She needed evidence of her own sanity, proof that the things she could see and touch were actually there, and not just figments of her imagination.

She wrote to a woman named Erin, whom Shawn had dated when Tara was a teenager. She asked Erin if she had also suffered abuse from Shawn. Tara needed to hear the truth from another source, to learn to trust her own reality once more. Erin shared a story about how Shawn had bashed her head against a brick wall, with such force that she thought he would kill her. To Tara, the story was a lifeline to reality, something tangible she could grasp at...

Shortform Exercise: Making New Starts

Work through how you can achieve closure with the past.

Describe a person, place, or experience that you decided to remove from your life. Explain the situation in a few sentences.

Shortform Exercise: Reflecting on Educated

Think through the major themes and lessons from Educated.

Tara talks a lot about freeing herself from intellectual and emotional slavery. Why do you think education was so important in freeing her from this bondage?