The transformative power of education
Photos by Lane McLaughlin November 13, 2019
Author Tara Westover speaks on her memoir, 'Educated,' the 2019 First-Year Common Reader
Education, like electricity, is most noticeable in its absence, according to Tara Westover.
As the daughter of survivalist Mormon parents who shunned public education, she first stepped foot into a classroom as a college freshman. There, the absence of her schooling would fuel a metamorphic quest for knowledge and form the basis of her 2018 bestselling memoir, Educated, chosen this year as the Common Reader for all incoming University of Delaware students.
On Tuesday, Nov. 12, Westover’s journey brought her to new terrain: the stage of Mitchell Hall. In an intimate conversation moderated by Provost Robin Morgan and students John Cohill and Jordyn Stevens, she spoke to a packed auditorium on education and its transformative power.
It’s a power that can be wielded in one of two ways, she said.
To illustrate the first, she opened with one of her favorite jokes about a farmer on an elite university campus. Spotting the nearest student, the farmer asks, “Do you know where the library is at?” to which the young man replies, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to end the sentence with a preposition?” So the farmer repeats his question, using the same words, but adding an insult and expletive at the end for grammatical correctness.
“Education,” Westover told the mostly first-year students in attendance, “is the ultimate privilege. And you have to decide whether education is arrogance or empathy.”
To elucidate the latter, she offered the story of her own experience in a college history class, mistaking Rosa Parks’ arrest for physically stealing a bus seat rather than merely sitting on one. “It broke my brain to think that this could have happened in my mother’s life,” the 33-year-old author said. “And even now, my version makes a lot more sense.”
In her memoir, Westover recalls her newly acquired knowledge of Parks, Emmett Till and Martin Luther King, and writes of how their stories took on new significance against the racial epithets hurled by her abusive brother.
“I saw their faces superimposed… [and] had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrestled,” she writes. “I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant.”
It is a struggle that persists in an increasingly polarized world, according to Westover, who has lived in both, dismantling scrap metal with her father, overcoming violence and abuse from her brother and discovering a life and future beyond.
“Through education, you access whole other worlds and other lives,” she said. “You realize there are other possibilities out there because you’ve seen them in your mind. It’s a little bit of an act of faith,” she said, quoting Hebrews 11:1.
The ultimate goal of education, she added, is not job training, but life training. “It’s about gaining the skills that will make you useful to yourself,” she said. “It’s more about inquiry than certainty. A flexibility of mind. The ability to see the world beyond your own point of view. Education is not about knowing more than someone else; it’s about knowing someone else.”
Westover’s talk was followed by a book signing and a reception with winners of the 2019 Common Reader essay content, which asked students to analyze the book and define education for themselves.
As third-place winner Leah Currie wrote, “Education is not measured by how much is taught or how much information can be memorized, it is about navigating our way through the unknown and allowing it to transform us.
“I moved to Delaware to escape the timid girl controlled by perceptions and expectations,” Currie continued. “In the short time I have been here, I have allowed myself the freedom to experience the pitfalls of failure, the excitement of engaging with new people and the challenges of being independent. This campus offers an abundance of opportunities to learn, it is my responsibility to be open-minded and pursue life in a way that is uniquely my own.”
The full list of winners includes:
- First place: Karin Ueda, a nutrition and medical sciences major from New York, New York;
- Second place: Shayna Moses, an honors nursing major from Kings Park, New York;
- Third place: Leah Currie, an honors global enterprise management major from Smithfield, Rhode Island;
- Fourth place: Josephine Oei, an honors biological sciences major from New Castle, Delaware;
- Honorable mentions: Emily Lewis, honors University studies, Oakland, New Jersey; Felicia Seybold, honors applied molecular biology and biotechnology, Dover, Delaware; Lucas Driscoll, honors political science, Newark, Delaware; and John Tucker, University studies, Middletown, Delaware; and
- English Language Institute Essay Contest winner: Ruotong Hou from Shenzhen, China.
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