V4 Educated Tara Westover

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 4

1 Read the title and the blurb (text on the back of the book).

- What does the title tell you about the book?

- Why do you think the author chose this title?

- Do you think this book is based on a true story? Explain your answer.

2 Now look at the picture on the cover.

- What more does it tell you about the book? Does it look like a nice place?

- Do you think this is going to be a nice, happy story?

Today's lesson objectives

The book in context: 

• learning more about Tara Westover's background

Mormonism

1. How old is this religion?
2. Where was it founded?
   
3. Mormonism used to be seen as a cult, as a secretive religion full of taboos. How is this changing?
   
4. What is the Book of Mormon?
   
5. What is the view of Mormons on alcohol, smoking, coffee and tea?
   
6. What does polygamy mean? What do Mormons think about this?
   
7. What is the dominant ethnic background of Mormons?
   

Tara Westover is an American author. Raised in Idaho by a father who opposed public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her family’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, she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. In 2014 she earned a PhD in history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and currently she is a senior research fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. Educated is her first book.

Author's Note

 “This story is not about Mormonism. Neither is it about any other form of religious belief.”

Why would she start the story like this?

Homework

Read Part 1 by Monday

Welcome!

1. Discuss your weekend shortly with your neighbour

2. Continue reading in Educated.

- What is the story about according to Tara Westover: family or education?

- How do you find the story so far?

- What did you find most striking?

Discussion Questions

- Tara starts taking piano lessons and dance classes. What do her parents think of this? Do the dance classes last long? Why?

- After a while, Tara takes up singing when her mother finds her a voice teacher. Is this a success?

- What does she learn from the other children at the rehearsals?

Family relations

Tara’s family members have different opinions about Tara wanting to go to school and get an education.

- Tyler

- Mother

- Father

- Shawn

Shawn

• What’s the evolution of Tara’s relationship with Shawn? 
• Why is she so drawn to him when he first moves back home?  (p. 112)
• When does she begin to understand that even though she loves him, she needs to protect herself from him?  (p. 133)
  

“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you, I had written in my journal. But Shawn had more power over me than I could possibly have imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there’s no greater power than that”. (p. 232)

College

 Tara spends her first months at college working several jobs, trying to scrape together enough money for food and rent. 

• Why does not having enough money make it hard for her to focus on her education? 
• What does she mean when she says that the most powerful advantage of money is “the ability to think of things besides money” (p. 240)?

Father

page 240

• Psychology class
• What does Tara realise here?