Educated?

Educated by Tara Westover

There has been real trouble on Walton’s Mountain, oops, sorry, Buck’s Peak. Or maybe Sam Walton's Mountain. Their valley was never green, and this little house styled on the principles of prairie living is really a house of horrors.  Christy by Catherine Marshall is another book that might be at home with this one.

We must remember that memoir is not biography or autobiography; memoir can be a collage of selective memories whose subject is but a slice of the author's life.  As the author points out, different members of the family have different memories of the same event.  Yet, I have a lot of problems believing this is an isolated, survivalist family.  For one thing, though they are allegedly isolated, and living off the grid, they have a computer and are hooked up to The Internet. I wasn’t hooked up to The Internet at home till after I got my own PhD in graduate school. We had quite a presence in my neighborhood, by the way, and we traveled, went to church, ate out, and were well known at T.J. MAXX and Marshall’s.

For another, Ma Westover couldn’t have grown her home remedies into Butterfly Essential Oils, Inc., without contact with the Feds, the FDA, basic concepts of local, state and federal business law, lawyers, contracts, etc.  They family even has its own lawyers and has been involved in at least one law suit dealing with an easement on their property. You can’t just concoct happy juices and lotions and peddle them on the street without running amok of the FDA and other agencies.  Just ask the folks growing marijuana in states where it is legal; they have to pay taxes, get organized, and get regulated.

By the way, Ma Westover had lots of close calls while practicing midwifery; let me note Idaho has a very extensive law on its books regarding midwives.  Here is its citation; 

TITLE 54

PROFESSIONS, VOCATIONS, AND BUSINESSES

CHAPTER 55

MIDWIFERY

     54-5505.

 It’s online.  Look it up.  She couldn’t have flown under the radar that easily on this one, either.  The mountain, after all, was Buck’s Peak, not Olympus, and it was the 1980s, and she wasn’t the goddess Hera.  Mrs. Westover also took classes to improve her skills as an herbalist,; again, this is not something someone living in isolation preparing for End of Days is likely to do.  Or, maybe I just don’t understand my friendly, neighborhood survivalists.

The Westovers drives, albeit not well, take trips; visit their daughter in grad school.  Apparently, they did home school.  I have trouble believing their daughter got into all of these schools with no diploma or GED. Having worked in higher education over thirty years, I can tell you my schools admitted no one without at least a GED.  The last person to educate himself the way she claims she did was Abraham Lincoln.

If you don’t believe me, quoted below are admission requirements for home schooled students for Brigham Young University:

As part of the application, homeschooled applicants will be required to submit any high school or university work completed through an institution accredited by a regional accrediting agency.

Any college work completed before your peers graduated from high school will be considered concurrent enrollment work. You will apply as a freshman and an ACT/SAT score will be required.

If you will not graduate from high school or complete secondary school through home schooling as required by your state, you may be required to submit a GED or state recognized high school equivalency exam. If this is a requirement for you, it will be shown on your status page.  (https://enrollment.byu.edu/admissions/homeschooled-applicants)

Whatever.  Maybe there are universities today that make exceptions, but Ma has her own Facebook page, at least one brother is on Twitter, and two other siblings have doctorates in various fields.  Primitive mountain folk eking out a living to sustain themselves in a fit of paranoia and suspicion do not have a presence on social media.  They also don’t encourage their children to sing in musicals like Annie,  and then come watch them. Really they don’t.  Not to be flip, but I don’t remember seeing Broadway Tunes by Operation Move,  The Ruby Ridge Review, or Christmas with the Branch Dravidians.

Just my opinion; don’t swallow me alive.  This author has a gift for beautiful, poetic prose, but this is a lovely novel.  Perhaps it is based on her family, and I’ve no doubt something happened to her, perhaps by an abusive brother, but this story is to Shakespearian, and to American Gothic, to be taken as gospel truth.

Perhaps I state the obvious.  Read the book and come to your own conclusions; visit the author’s Facebook page and view her various and numerous YouTube appearances.  Come to your own conclusions.   The book is written in beautiful, poetic prose, with a couple incongruities.  E.g., the author states at one point she was feeling “poorly” which is colloquial vocabulary out of place with the rest of her discourse.  

This book is autobiographical or biographical fiction, e.g., The Little House Books, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and A Million Little Pieces.  I am putting my copy on my bookshelf next to The Amityville Horror.