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The Subjectivity of Upbringings in Education: Review on Tara Westover's Memoir, Educated

By Ysa Pagud - March 09, 2024

   

According to Tara Westover, “I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school,”. She recounts the narrative of the occasions of her life from a vantage point in her late twenties, in which she adds a lot of remarks on the most common way of attempting to show up at an exact adaptation of the past. 

Tara grew up in a household that has a different ideology when it comes towards education. Specifically, it was pondered by his father how it conflicts their church’s purpose into living because he believes it is a form of the government to brainwash children of the youth to go against their religion as a Mormon. 

From the first few chapters she resorted to submissiveness to the absurd idea of staying home and do labor. There is a great relevance for young kids to have secure, positive associations with grown-ups by being raised and educated with regards to how to help their turn of events and learning. 

Moreover, the National Research Council disclosed how the relationship of a grown-up to a kid– the enthusiastic nature of their communication, the encounters they share, the grown-up's convictions about the kid's capacities– persuades small kids' learning and move their fearlessness. In which Tara’s emotional quality built up from being silent, and ignorant about her surroundings during her early years, supporting with one of her lines in Educated, “I couldn’t defend myself, because I didn’t understand the accusation,". She resorted to having no opinions because her understanding of matters is limited to only work that her family is inflicting upon her. 

Various studies have risen and early learning clarifies the significance and intricacy of working with little youngsters from earliest stages through the early years (National Research Council, 2015). Tara never felt secured by her family’s fabricated upbringings– the theory about education, dismissing creation of their birth certificates, dwindling their confidence through harsh words, and so on. 



As time progresses, she battles to break free from her controlling and fierce family who need her to carry on with an existence of separation and submission. For such reason, she became progressively inquisitive with regards to the more extensive world, which allowed her to seek motivation on her own education by reading at their basement every once in a while after her shifts at their farm work. 

From her preparations to a formal education, she ultimately attends a university and graduate school, where she understands she needs to have an independent mind and settle on her own choices. From the time she learned independence within her journey, she did everything by herself from self-educating during her times at home, to forcing herself to fit in a college when she had no educational background yet. Wherein, the independence an individual obtains is assumed as a key part in pressure responses and nature of adapting in compromising circumstances (Bandura, 1997). 

The traumatic experiences Tara had to go through doesn’t just stop with manipulative stunts from her father, but a deep perception of hospitals. Her family have undergone a certain car accident, yet no amount of thought had been given to call any ambulance for the situation but went straight home in lieu.

In which, the mastermind for such solution was his father. This time it was believed that behind the science and medicine inside hospitals are of devil’s work, where her father claims how they’d rather been cared at home with herbs and her mother’s specialty with herbal medicines. 

On the other hand, the people who have a high feeling of adapting viability take on systems and blueprints intended to change dangerous conditions into additional harmless ones. In this method of effect guideline, adequacy convictions ease pressure and nervousness by empowering people to prepare and support adapting endeavors (Bandura & Adams, 1980). Tara Westover have adapted throughout the memoir after inhibiting independence a sense of self-protection, in which from her own relationship she muttered, 

“He said he loved me but this was over his head. He couldn’t save me, only I could,” 

The continuous coping mechanism became strong as she believed how the importance of love and friendship wasn’t in the picture, but rather her ability to convince herself she is strong. The narration of her story grew out from being compliant to information laid to her, to carefully sifting through and filtering out such information before forming such judgement. Throughout the entire memoir, upbringings hold a dear place in a children’s mindset and environment. 

Kids who get compelling passionate and informative help from their guardians can move toward learning openings all the more emphatically and certainly, and the quality of those connections affect their study hall achievements. Tara Westover may have been deprived of learning capabilities within the comforts of her home, she found nurturing within her professors in her college years. 

From the words of her professor, “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is the illusion, and it always was,” which filled up what was lost back from her home. 

Therefore, she didn’t allow her father’s precarious fostering to continuously bring her to vain but rather subjectively towards her success. In which, she didn’t accept any ill treatment anymore, just as how she’s showing that she will presently not stick to the religion or follow his power, and that she is holistically going to esteem her own choice more than her relationship with her family.



♥,

YSA

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