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Studying in spite of: why the story of one student has become a global symbol of education
"My parents were the richest crazies in the state," is how Tara Westover describes her childhood. This is the life of a little girl living on a farm in Idaho in a family of radical Mormons. The family was engaged in scrap metal collection and herbal medicine, and the children worked on the family plot. Of the seven children, none went to school, none used medical care, none had a birth certificate. This is where her journey to becoming a world-changing bestselling author begins.
Tara Westover's book "Apprentice. To betray in order to find yourself" (English: Educated: Memoir) was released in February 2018 and two months later it was presented on the Oprah Winfrey show, and a year later the writer was included in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, and her book received the status of a cultural phenomenon.
The book tells how a girl who grew up in the closed world with a crazy mother, an apocalyptic father and an aggressive brother was able to escape, go to university, and discover a new world. All this happened thanks to reading. At first, the girl read the Bible, then moves on to rare books and textbooks from the nearest school in those parts. A separate quest becomes for her the task of learning to read at all, since the brothers and sister who taught the girl could not read themselves. Tara entered the classroom for the first time when she was already 17 years old.
Eventually, self-study allowed her to enroll at Brigham Young University, and then receive a scholarship and complete graduate studies at Cambridge University, become a historian, and then a lecturer at Harvard. This is an amazing story about how education not only expands horizons, but also often requires giving up comfortable but limiting beliefs in order to truly understand the world and oneself.
At the same time, "Apprentice" is not a success story in the usual motivational sense. This is an honest and sometimes painful story about how education changes not only professional prospects, but also relationships with loved ones, self-image, truth and loyalty. “Apprentice” is not an easy reading for entertainment, but a powerful experience for those who learn to make connections, ask questions, and rethink their beliefs. In the world where practicality is often valued above everything else, reading becomes that rare process that develops the ability to comprehend not only mechanisms, but also one's own place in the world.
At a technical university, it's easy to focus on formulas, calculations, and applied skills - and at the same time miss the main thing: education begins with an internal permission to study. Understanding yourself, your past, and your motivation to study is an important part of becoming a professional. “Apprentice” opens your eyes to the fact that education means not only the accumulation of facts, but also a profound personality change. The story of Tara Westover reminds us that the path to real education does not begin in the classroom, but at the moment when a person decides to go beyond the imposed picture of the world and take responsibility for their own thinking.
