Interview
Tara Westover: Mormons, Harry Potter and the future of education
- Tara Westover, author of the memoir Educated, is the youngest of seven children raised in an isolated, fundamentalist Mormon family in rural Idaho; she did not attend school until age 17.
- Westover's father opposed mainstream institutions, keeping his children from doctors, hospitals, and birth certificates; she received her birth certificate only at age nine.
- She cites hearing opera at age eight as the catalyst for her desire to learn, realizing that skills like singing required formal instruction and a university.
- Westover self-taught algebra for a year to pass the ACT, eventually gaining admission to Brigham Young University (BYU).
- Her time at BYU (2004–2008) was marked by significant social and cultural alienation; she struggled with a lack of peers, social skills, and basic knowledge, once asking about the Holocaust in a lecture and being mistaken for a denier.
- She perceives her family's fundamentalism as an extreme outlier, noting that her town and the general Mormon population were mainstream and fully engaged with institutions like schools and healthcare.
- Westover reports a sharp generational split within her family: three of her seven siblings earned PhDs (including herself), while the other four did not obtain high school diplomas.
- She argues that while education has become overly standardized and institutionalized, it must retain a balance between individual agency and social standards to avoid being purely passive.
- Westover criticizes the low pay and working conditions of teachers, asserting that high-quality education requires an industry capable of attracting and respecting top talent.
- She observes that her brother Tyler's homeschooling method, which follows children's natural obsessions (e.g., icebergs, glaciers), fosters a view of learning as pleasure rather than work.
- Westover's transition to Cambridge University felt less jarring than her move from isolation to BYU, as her American identity and lack of a regional accent allowed her to enter with a "clean slate."
- She is currently estranged from half of her family due to her brother's violent behavior and her parents' refusal to acknowledge or change the dynamic.
- Westover defines education broadly as the process of constructing one's own mind and navigating the tension between familial identity and individual choice, rather than merely job training.
- She distinguishes her memoir from sociological works like Hillbilly Elegy, clarifying that her family is not representative of the American rural experience and intended the book as a personal story of identity formation.