Educated Westover Family

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All Characters Tara Westover Gene Westover / Dad Faye Westover / Mother Shawn Westover Charles Tyler Westover Richard Westover Luke Westover Grandma-down-the-hill Grandma-over-in-town Professor Steinberg Dr. Kerry Audrey Westover Emily Westover Stefanie Westover Erin Robin.

Tara

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Educated Tara Westover Family Photos

  1. That she refused to see reality, choose shawn over westover, talks about dad being mentally ill, Emily being bullied by shawn, telling Westover she is the only one who can handle Shawn, she is a stronger woman now, and that she should have protected Westover as well, as she was her child.
  2. Tara Westover is an American author, best known for her memoir, Educated. Born into a Mormon family, she had an unconventional upbringing, which is the highlight of her memoir. Westover never attended school, had a limited source of learning, and had no access to proper medical facilities while growing up.

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Educated tara westover family

1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Educated

Photo Of Shawn Westover Educated

Educated is the autobiographical story of Tara Westover’s journey from being the child of extreme anti-government, anti-science, and religious fundamentalist Mormon parents to becoming a Cambridge- and Harvard-educated PhD.

Born in her family’s isolated home in the mountains of Idaho, Tara was denied a proper education as a child. Her father, Gene, believed that public schools were a tool of the “socialist” U.S. government, meant to “brainwash” people. As such, he kept his children out of school and relegated them to a dubious homeschooling curriculum designed by his wife, Faye, who lacked any proper credentials for educating children. There were no tests or exams at Faye’s rudimentary school, and Tara mostly learned to read and write by studying the Holy Bible and theBook of Mormon. Because of this, Tara had enormous gaps in her knowledge—she barely knew the basics of elementary math and was deeply ignorant on key historical facts about the U.S. and the world.

Her father was also deeply hostile to what he termed the “Medical Establishment,” believing that modern medicine was a plot cooked up by the government to poison people. A key part of his religious fundamentalism was his belief that God had provided all the medicine one would ever need in the form of natural herbs. He and his wife were committed to homeopathy, alternative medicine practiced in the home.

Educated Westover Family

Faye believed herself to be a gifted healer, far more effective than any actual doctor (though she lacked any medical training). Thus, the family treated colds, sore throats, and even severe cuts, bruises, burns, and concussions with homemade concoctions of lobelia, skullcap, and eucalyptus. Hospital visits were simply out of the question. As Tara recalls, these remedies were almost never effective and they subjected her and her siblings to needless and easily-preventable suffering throughout their childhood.

Educated Tara Westover Family Members

When she was a teenager, Tara began to be abused by her older brother Shawn. On several occasions, he beat her, dragged her across rooms by her hair, stuck her face in the toilet, and even broke her wrist, toes, and ankles. Tara was tormented by the abuse and manipulated into believing that it had been her fault. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their patriarchal worldview and deeply anti-feminist beliefs regarding women’s sexuality and role in the home, Tara’s parents turned a blind eye to Shawn’s violence and...