Tara Westover - Educated - Memoir

Radio Presentations

Part 1: Introduction, Theme, Philosophy (3 mins)

(Spoken by you, not read from the book)

• Educated – Spoken Script for Delivery (~500 words)

  Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up in a world where even your thoughts and beliefs are controlled? // Where the very idea of education is treated as a danger, and you are taught who to be, what to think, and what to believe—before you even have a chance to decide for yourself?

  That’s the reality Tara Westover describes in her memoir, Educated. // She grew up in rural Idaho, in a family that distrusted schools, doctors, and the outside world. // From an early age, Tara was taught that you cannot trust any institution—not hospitals, not schools, not government—except those that defend the ideas of the one in control. // Her parents didn’t just restrict her access to knowledge—they taught her a worldview, a rigid set of rules about obedience, fear, and suspicion that shaped everything she saw, thought, and felt.

  Despite this mental and emotional control, Tara had a curiosity that refused to be contained. // Against the odds, she discovered books, ideas, and knowledge that opened her mind to a world far beyond her family’s rigid expectations. // Eventually, she earned a PhD from Cambridge University—but her journey was never just about degrees. // It was about claiming the freedom to think, to question, and to define herself, even when everything she had been taught told her she couldn’t.

  The themes of Educated are powerful because they touch on both personal and universal struggles. // It’s a story of self-discovery through education, of resilience in the face of isolation, and of the tension between family loyalty and personal growth. // Tara’s memoir asks: How do we find our own voice when we’ve been trained to accept someone else’s? // How do we reconcile love for family with the need to break free from controlling beliefs and indoctrination?

  And the philosophy of the memoir is clear: Education is liberation. // Learning is not just memorizing facts—it’s a tool for understanding the world, for reshaping yourself, and for claiming the freedom to choose your own beliefs, your own path, your own life. // Tara’s story shows that the greatest power of education is not knowledge alone, but the ability to think critically, challenge indoctrination, and reclaim your mind from those who would control it.

  So—why should you read Educated? // Because it’s more than a memoir of one woman’s journey. // It’s a story about the courage it takes to step away from mental control, to leave that prison of fear and indoctrination, to question everything you’ve been taught, and to claim your own freedom. // For anyone who has ever felt trapped by circumstance, ideology, or fear, Tara’s story offers both inspiration and a mirror.

  In the end, Educated reminds us that freedom begins in the mind. // And it leaves us with a question we can all ask ourselves: If someone tried to tell you who to be, what to think, what to believe, and told you to trust only their version of the world—would you have the courage to break free—and educate yourself?

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Part 2: Reading Segment 1 (3 mins)

I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.

The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down

the open neck of my shirt. The gales are strong this close to the mountain,

as if the peak itself is exhaling. Down below, the valley is peaceful,

undisturbed. Meanwhile our farm dances: the heavy conifer trees sway

slowly, while the sagebrush and thistles quiver, bowing before every puff

and pocket of air. Behind me a gentle hill slopes upward and stitches itself

to the mountain base. If I look up, I can see the dark form of the Indian

Princess.

The hill is paved with wild wheat. If the conifers and sagebrush are

soloists, the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following all the rest

in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as

great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a

moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind.

Turning toward our house on the hillside, I see movements of a different

kind, tall shadows stiffly pushing through the currents. My brothers are

awake, testing the weather. I imagine my mother at the stove, hovering over

bran pancakes. I picture my father hunched by the back door, lacing his

steel-toed boots and threading his callused hands into welding gloves. On

the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.

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.

Dad worries that the Government will force us to go but it can’t, because

it doesn’t know about us. Four of my parents’ seven children don’t have

birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at

home and have never seen a doctor or nurse.* We have no school records

because we’ve never set foot in a classroom. When I am nine, I will be

issued a Delayed Certificate of Birth, but at this moment, according to the

state of Idaho and the federal government, I do not exist.

Of course I did exist. I had grown up preparing for the Days of

Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with

blood. I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating

supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on,

unaffected.

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which

change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each

morning, swept over the valley and dropped behind the peak. The snows

that fell in winter always melted in the spring. Our lives were a cycle—the

cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons—circles of perpetual change that,

when complete, meant nothing had changed at all. I believed my family was

a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal. But

eternity belonged only to the mountain.

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Part 3: Reading Segment 2 (3 mins)

Excerpt 

Once, when I was fifteen, after I’d started wearing mascara and lip gloss,

Shawn had told Dad that he’d heard rumors about me in town, that I had a

reputation. Immediately Dad thought I was pregnant. He should never have

allowed those plays in town, he screamed at Mother. Mother said I was

trustworthy, modest. Shawn said no teenage girl was trustworthy, and that in

his experience those who seemed pious were sometimes the worst of all.

I sat on my bed, knees pressed to my chest, and listened to them shout.

Was I pregnant? I wasn’t sure. I considered every interaction I’d had with a

boy, every glance, every touch. I walked to the mirror and raised my shirt,

then ran my fingers across my abdomen, examining it inch by inch and

thought, Maybe.

I had never kissed a boy.

I had witnessed birth, but I’d been given none of the facts of conception.

While my father and brother shouted, ignorance kept me silent: I couldn’t

defend myself, because I didn’t understand the accusation.

Days later, when it was confirmed that I was not pregnant, I evolved a

new understanding of the word “whore,” one that was less about actions

and more about essence. It was not that I had done something wrong so

much as that I existed in the wrong way. There was something impure in the

fact of my being.

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.

—

I STOOD OUTSIDE THE bishop’s office on a cold night in February. I didn’t

know what had taken me there.

The bishop sat calmly behind his desk. He asked what he could do for

me, and I said I didn’t know. No one could give me what I wanted, because

what I wanted was to be remade.

“I can help,” he said, “but you’ll need to tell me what’s bothering you.”

His voice was gentle, and that gentleness was cruel. I wished he would yell.

If he yelled, it would make me angry, and when angry I felt powerful. I

didn’t know if I could do this without feeling powerful.

I cleared my throat, then talked for an hour.

The bishop and I met every Sunday until spring. To me he was a

patriarch with authority over me, but he seemed to surrender that authority

the moment I passed through his door. I talked and he listened, drawing the

shame from me like a healer draws infection from a wound.

When the semester ended, I told him I was going home for the summer. I

was out of money; I couldn’t pay rent. He looked tired when I told him that.

He said, “Don’t go home, Tara. The church will pay your rent.”

I didn’t want the church’s money. I’d made the decision. The bishop

made me promise only one thing: that I wouldn’t work for my father.

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Part 4: Reading Segment 3 (3 mins)

Excerpt 

A few were venturing onto the ridge but they did so cautiously, taking the

same ungainly side steps Dr. Kerry had, tipping and swaying in the wind;

everyone else was holding tightly to the stone parapet, knees bent, backs

arched, as if unsure whether to walk or crawl.

I raised my hand and gripped the wall.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said. “It’s not a criticism.”

He paused, as if unsure he should say more. “Everyone has undergone a

change,” he said. “The other students were relaxed until we came to this

height. Now they are uncomfortable, on edge. You seem to have made the

opposite journey. This is the first time I’ve seen you at home in yourself.

It’s in the way you move: it’s as if you’ve been on this roof all your life.”

A gust of wind swept over the parapet and Dr. Kerry teetered, clutching

the wall. I stepped up onto the ridge so he could flatten himself against the

buttress. He stared at me, waiting for an explanation.

“I’ve roofed my share of hay sheds,” I said finally.

“So your legs are stronger? Is that why you can stand in this wind?”

I had to think before I could answer. “I can stand in this wind, because

I’m not trying to stand in it,” I said. “The wind is just wind. You could

withstand these gusts on the ground, so you can withstand them in the air.

There is no difference. Except the difference you make in your head.”

He stared at me blankly. He hadn’t understood.

“I’m just standing,” I said. “You are all trying to compensate, to get your

bodies lower because the height scares you. But the crouching and the

sidestepping are not natural. You’ve made yourselves vulnerable. If you

could just control your panic, this wind would be nothing.”

“The way it is nothing to you,” he said. (p245)