Imagine waking up every morning at the crack of dawn. You pull on your steel-toed boots and shuffle downstairs to see your mother already hunched over in the kitchen working on oils or cooking. Your father comes in from outside already covered in filth. Your six other siblings start making their way to the kitchen table and you all eat breakfast together. Soon enough, your father starts lecturing how the public-school system was the government's ploy to get people away from God. This was a typical morning for Tara Westover.
"Tara Westover is an American author. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her father's junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist, and midwife. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom."
"After that first encounter with education, she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a Ph.D. in history in 2014." -Tara Westover Website
Educated is an interesting and enlightening coming of age story. We follow the life of young author Tara Westover from growing up in a small town in Idaho. Her family and community are Mormon, which is a huge component of her story. Her father doesn't believe in public education, says it's the government's way to get people away from God.
Education is important, it is the foundation of our society. Without it, we wouldn't know anything about us or the world we live in. Never stop learning, because there is always something new to find out. Believe in yourself and always know that it's okay to be educated.
Sheetal Tadiparty
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