Educated

LESSON 1: Submissive Childhood 

Unlike the life of normal children who’d go to school, Tara Westover’s life was all about living in the mountains, and preparing to sustain the apocalypse which, according to her father Gene, might lead to the end of the world. Gene, a man with strong Mormon fundamentals, had a delusional thought process, because he believed that the socialist Government was conspiring against the people. In his opinion, schools were meant to brainwash children, and doctors and nurses were agents of the Government whose only aim was to reduce the importance of a person. Due to this perspective of their father, Tara and her six siblings were home-schooled initially and later on, left to learn on their own. Half of the kids in the household did not possess a birth certificate because they were delivered at home. Neither of them had ever been to a hospital owing to their mother Faye’s excellence in home-made medicines. Although she was brought up in a less irrational environment, Faye did not oppose her husband’s ideologies and practiced unlicensed midwifery as an occupation.    

Tara’s grandmother was not as orthodox as her father, and she suggested that Tara should move across the state with them, so that she could attend school. But on the day they were leaving, Tara decided to stay back with her parents. Tara and her siblings’ education was limited to the few books they owned, coupled with weekly trips to a public library. 

Tara was ten when she was working with her father in his scrapyard along with her other brothers. Multiple mishaps happened at the scrapyard, causing serious injuries to her siblings and instigating violent behaviour among them. Thus, Tara’s childhood consisted of isolation and passive upbringing, along with limited external interactions with humans.     

LESSON 2: A seed of change

Things were going the same, until Tyler, one of Tara’s siblings, left home and started attending college. Tara was waiting for her freedom. She realised that she’d have to find her way out and in order to accomplish her dream she started doing odd jobs. Initially, she worked at the local post office, and later on started baby-sitting. After taking classes for dancing and singing, she also worked in local theatre.

One fine day in the early 2000s, Tara’s family was visiting her grandma, and on their way back, they met with an accident. Although everyone survived, Gene was not of the opinion of accepting medical care from the hospital. Instead, they relied on home-made medicines. The recovery did not go as planned, and Tara’s mother Faye