I wasn’t aware of Stefanie’s account. The family has much discontent to deal with. I was asked to review LaRee’s book, so that is the scope of my review. Thanks for commenting. The 10 Best Books of 2018". The New York Times. November 29, 2018. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved July 25, 2020. Thanks for your comment. I’m impressed that you took some time to write. I would like to add that Laree had access to excellent medical care. Again, I’m from the same general area. There’s a local hospital, which is basic. Then there’s another, much bigger facility less than an hour away. For technical health issues, Salt Lake City has amazing options (about 3 hours away). There’s access to one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals as well as a world renowned cancer center. Laree simply chose to trust natural and herbal remedies more than western medicine. I see no problem in that unless someone’s health is compromised by doing so. And that’s what she’s being tasked with, that and the fact that she encourages others to forego medical care and go natural instead. Anyone should be very careful about doing that.

In response to her daughter’s therapy sessions, LaRee feels there’s a “high likelihood the therapist was manipulating her memories” (p. 290). She also encouraged older children to teach younger children (p. 93-94). With her busy career as a midwife and her own illnesses to tend, she was gone from the family often. This fact should be considered when Tara, the youngest of the children, insists she didn’t receive an adequate education growing up.The family experienced two major car accidents, resulting in serious injuries. Val battles additional injuries and health concerns. Why was medical care not sought during these critical times? In terms of whether or not Tara’s account is “true,” as others have pointed out, it’s her truth. Every last little detail is not important, the overall conditions under which she was brought up is the point here, not minor details about places and the exact timeline of events. In fact, as others have pointed out, she has gone above and beyond in an attempt to make it as accurate as possible. Probably because she knew her father would retaliate in someway, which he has in the publishing of this book. The writing and publishing of Educating was CLEARLY not her mother’s idea, nor her sole creation. He uses all of his family as his personal slaves, for his own purposes, and it’s clear that is what this book is. I have NO interest in reading it. Thank you for doing that for me.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do experience blessings and miracles. So do people of other faiths and individuals who don’t practice religion. God loves us that much. He blesses us and we are counseled to share deeply spiritual experiences on a limited basis. Sacred experiences or received blessings are not to be used to establish credibility or enforce a point of conflict to prove that one’s differing thoughts or decisions are right. Mental Illness

P.S. I think American society’s stereotyped Mormon/Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints is nowadays closer to Mitt Romney than Tara’s zealot dad. Thank goodness for Mitt. And thanks for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon, as I read your review and the comments, and took time to consider and clarify my own thoughts.

This comment is distasteful and inaccurate. Mentally ill is a very broad term and includes illnesses like depression and anxiety, which many people suffer with and every one of us suffers through on occasion. To suggest mentally ill people should not have children and to call them “crazy” is extremely disrespectful. How much nicer it would be if the plants were being cultivated by the proprietors so there was a sustainable business which could be a credit to Idaho rather than controversial. The Westovers may argue these are just minor details in the bigger picture of their story. But they are facts that indicate Val’s stubbornness and controlling nature, something Tara repeatedly brings up throughout her entire book. They might also help to explain the bigger picture of why there were and are so many Westover problems in the community. LaRee does provide evidence in her memoir that she educated her children. She, herself, is educated. I think that trying to educate a lot of children PLUS perform midwife duties for too many years was simply too much. Perhaps her earlier children received an adequate home education. I don’t know. But I believe Tara when she says she did not receive much education at home. I simply don’t think LaRee was around enough to do it and was probably worn out. Those aren’t excuses, in my opinion. I believe they are further evidence that her later children weren’t taught adequately. In one of the crashes, LaRee hit her head against the windshield, resulting in “raccoon eyes” that Tara later realized are an indication of traumatic brain injury. LaRee reportedly suffered from severe migraines for years and retreated for hours and days at a time to the dark basement, seeking relief from additional pain experienced in daylight hours. Treatments included homeopathic remedies but no hospital visits.Thank you for your excellent points. I think it’s important to clarify the timeline of when Laree was a midwife. I believe it would have been the late 70s and 80s. I don’t know what educational options, if any, were available to her in southeastern Idaho. Laree’s memoir devotes much attention to midwifery, but she didn’t really understand the target audience for Educated. I don’t believe most of those readers are very interested in knowing the details of midwifery, to be quite honest. So Laree missed the mark in devoting so much attention to it in her rebuttal memoir.It suits her needs but not for the majority of interest.

The final chapters offer models for the possibility of an expansive notion of ‘educating for the Anthropocene’. Drawing on activists and analysing their organisations’ mobilisation strategies, two modes of agnostic pluralism (AG) were captured: the embrace of differences and politics. In Pashulok, the focus was on intergenerational knowledge linking memories of the past to imaginaries of the future, while in Wentworth intragenerational mobilisations meant building bridges to find commonalities of struggle in spite of differences in identity or social location. For example, the issue of air pollution in South Durban became a bonding agent between groups previously segregated based on race and class (176). Sutoris makes the case that where AG is valued, there is a higher chance of politicised education as it enables a variety of processes and pedagogies (201). Linked to this are ideas of ‘radical imagination’ and ‘intergenerational dialogue’. These foster the antithesis of bureaucratisation and depoliticisation, creating education that fuels political subjects and agency. Charles: Westover's first "boyfriend". Clouded by her father's teachings, Westover is never able to get intimate with Charles. She ends up distancing herself from him when Shawn's abuse gets worse and he tries to tell her that Shawn's behavior wasn't normal. They remain friends to this day.

I’ve looked at satellite imagery on Google Maps but I can’t definitely pinpoint the feature.. although I’ve spotted something that might be the Indian Princess. Your refer to Valaree, as being the daughter who helped with the mothers company. In Educated I only remember her mentioning a sister named Audrey or Aubrey? And that the rest of her siblings were brothers. Tony Westover: Westover's oldest brother and first child of their parents. He is noted only as working with their father at the scrapyard. He is 12 years older than Tara. Cummings, William. " 'Factfulness' and 'Educated' among the titles on Obama's summer reading list". USA Today . Retrieved July 25, 2020. LaRee isn’t a bad person. She’s trying to do good things, but she’s misguided in many areas. I do not know her personally, but this is what I concluded after reading both books.