Has anyone read LaRee Westover's memoir Educating?

[thatfirstsip]

A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to get a 28 on the ACT, is what I'm saying.

It can absolutely be insufficient schooling, and outright educational neglect, and she still could have gotten a 28 on the ACT after some prep as a high schooler, having not been educated really at all past say a fifth or sixth grade level. These things are not inconsistent. 

[EKS]

1 minute ago, thatfirstsip said:

A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to get a 28 on the ACT, is what I'm saying.

If the sixth grader was at the 99th percentile, then possibly.  

[maize]

11 minutes ago, thatfirstsip said:

A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to get a 28 on the ACT, is what I'm saying.

It can absolutely be insufficient schooling, and outright educational neglect, and she still could have gotten a 28 on the ACT after some prep as a high schooler, having not been educated really at all past say a fifth or sixth grade level. These things are not inconsistent. 

I'm inclined to agree with this, with the caveat of "no externally directed education past 6th grade" not "no learning past 6th grade". "Formal instruction" and "learning" might overlap but they arent equivalent. I don't remember exact scores, but I'm confident I was scoring above the 90th percentile when I took the SAT in 9th grade. My education in grades 6-8 was in a foreign language that I really struggled to learn...I wasn't getting much academically out of school (other than eventually becoming reasonably proficient in that language). My math education suffered particularly.

I coped with the stress by reading (instead of doing schoolwork). Among other things, I read an unabridged translation of War and Peace at age 13. I didn’t take the ACT until 11th grade, and at that point scored 33 with zero preparation.  I have no doubt I could have scored a 28 several years earlier.

[thatfirstsip]

14 minutes ago, EKS said:

If the sixth grader was at the 99th percentile, then possibly.  

Correct. Given her family history, I don't see this as all that unlikely 

 

Just now, maize said:

I'm inclined to agree with this, with the caveat of "no externally directed education past 6th grade" not "no learning past 6th grade". "Formal instruction" and "learning" might overlap but they arent equivalent. I don't remember exact scores, but I'm confident I was scoring above the 90th percentile when I took the SAT in 9th grade. My education in grades 6-8 was in a foreign language that I really struggled to learn...I wasn't getting much academically out of school (other than eventually becoming reasonably proficient in that language). My math education suffered particularly.

I coped with the stress by reading (instead of doing schoolwork). Among other things, I read an unabridged translation of War and Peace at age 13. I didn’t take the ACT until 11th grade, and at that point scored 33 with zero preparation.  I have no doubt I could have scored a 28 several years earlier.

Correct, that's what I meant. People, maybe especially bright ones but I'd be willing to be wrong about that, keep learning on their own if there are any materials at all to allow it and sufficient time not otherwise occupied (by too-early hard physical work, or childcare at 12, or etc.) 

I think maybe this was especially true before the advent of easy electronic entertainment. Books were all you HAD for entertainment, and the projects or imaginary worlds you could make up to do and engage with.

This is not to say that refusing to deal with parental mental illness, secluding yourselves from society, and failing to provide any deliberate education (even deliberate unschooling) isn't neglect. It is. Her childhood was, even viewed rosily, neglectful and abusive, and her parents failed her.

But people can be very resilient, and bright kids sometimes find ways to keep learning even in these circumstances.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Her education didn’t put any barriers (at least any insurmountable ones ) to keep her from getting a phd. Same for siblings so she wasn’t a one-off. I don’t see her as the poor educational victim that she apparently sees in herself. 

[katilac]

6 hours ago, thatfirstsip said:

I am about her age; I took it several years before her, in very early middle school (so late 90s). I got a similar composite. I'd had nothing past decimals and fractions; a low math score was balanced by high in the other subtests. I didn't prep for it at all or know anything about it.

Her wiki page says she could read as a child and then studied on her own to prep for the ACT. A 28 composite is not a particularly high score.

It's top 10%, so objectively it's a high score. 

2 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

 So, like all feelings, they are meant to be taken seriously but not meant to be taken as facts about the world -- only facts about the internal life of a person.  

I think that, if you publish a book that speaks directly and seriously about the lives and actions of other people, and call it an autobiography, you absolutely can expect that it will be taken as generally factual. 

51 minutes ago, thatfirstsip said:

A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to get a 28 on the ACT, is what I'm saying.

I definitely disagree with this. A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to score in the top ten percent of a test gauging college readiness? What are you basing that on? 

I'm basing my disagreement on the fact that there are plenty of bright kids with a basic sixth grade education and well above, and, objectively, only  about 10% of all test takers get a 28 or above. That math just doesn't math. 

Added note: I see that 28 is now top 11%, but I think the argument holds. 

Edited May 26, 2023 by katilac

[thatfirstsip]

1 hour ago, katilac said:

It's top 10%, so objectively it's a high score. 

I think that, if you publish a book that speaks directly and seriously about the lives and actions of other people, and call it an autobiography, you absolutely can expect that it will be taken as generally factual. 

I definitely disagree with this. A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to score in the top ten percent of a test gauging college readiness? What are you basing that on? 

I'm basing my disagreement on the fact that there are plenty of bright kids with a basic sixth grade education and well above, and, objectively, only  about 10% of all test takers get a 28 or above. That math just doesn't math. 

Added note: I see that 28 is now top 11%, but I think the argument holds. 

I think probably I was speaking too loosely and should define my terms: by "bright," I mean 130+ IQ, closer to 140+. 

I'm basing the conclusion on my own experience getting a very similar score on the ACT with only a basic sixth grade education (formally); of course most of my education at that point had come through reading on my own, and puzzling through things, etc. 

 

A 28 is a high score, but it is not particularly high; you can get a 28 with good verbal ability and reading comprehension and no math past the beginnings of pre-A (or you could in the late 90s). 

Edited May 26, 2023 by thatfirstsip

[Farrar]

9 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Her education didn’t put any barriers (at least any insurmountable ones ) to keep her from getting a phd. Same for siblings so she wasn’t a one-off. I don’t see her as the poor educational victim that she apparently sees in herself. 

I don't buy into the idea that if people can overcome barriers, the barriers must not be a big deal or must not exist.

[thatfirstsip]

Just now, Farrar said:

I don't buy into the idea that if people can overcome barriers, the barriers must not be a big deal or must not exist.

Yes! This is exactly the thing I've been trying to say.

[EKS]

9 hours ago, thatfirstsip said:

Correct. Given her family history, I don't see this as all that unlikely 

If you read Educating, you'll see that it's likely that she most likely had far more education than she was claiming in Educated, so our speculation about 6th grade and percentiles doesn't really matter much.

[EKS]

11 hours ago, katilac said:

I definitely disagree with this. A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to score in the top ten percent of a test gauging college readiness? What are you basing that on?

I don't know what thatfirstsip is basing it on.  

I do know that a sixth grader who scores at the 99th percentile on a standardized achievement test might have an equivalent score to a 12th grader at the 90th percentile on that same test.  This is because this is true for the MAP test.  

But it's a big jump from this fact to the statement that a bright 16yo with a sixth grade education could get a 28 on the ACT just by prepping on their own with a book.  While scores on different achievement tests are highly correlated with one another, one huge difference between the MAP and the ACT is that the ACT is tightly timed and the MAP is untimed.  

In a cursory search, I couldn't find out if the ACT norms were based on a pool of college bound students or a representative sample of all students nationwide.  If it's college bound, then the 90th percentile for the ACT would probably equate more to the 95th percentile on the MAP (I'm basing this on SAT data, and it's not clear to me if the entire pool of "users" is college bound; probably not).  

Edited May 26, 2023 by EKS

[Jean in Newcastle]

1 hour ago, Farrar said:

I don't buy into the idea that if people can overcome barriers, the barriers must not be a big deal or must not exist.

I specifically was talking about education itself - nothing else about abuse etc.  I do question someone who says that they weren't educated when they and others who received the same education were able to get phds.  I would suspect that most of us could point to some less than ideal educational experiences.  I can.  I went to a one-room schoolhouse.  Due to the nature of a one-room schoolhouse, I studied most things with one other student (who was completely opposite than me).  If the teacher was busy with her round-robin of one-on-one meetings with other students (so we each got about 15 minutes of her time a day) then we helped each other if we got stuck.  In some ways it wasn't a bad education.  In some ways it wasn't ideal either. . I'm not crying about being a victim here.  (Again - limited to education only).  I had two years (one elementary and one high school) in the US educational system.  I learned a bit in the elementary classroom.  I learned nothing in the high school ones other than to learn to fight back at the bullies who called me Jap and would douse me with icy water in the middle of Michigan winters.  But hey - still not going to claim the victim label.  I started boarding school at age 11 - lots here as fodder for therapy appointments though the education part was pretty good.  Still not going to claim the victim label.  We all have barriers in life.  We work to overcome them - with help at times (which is perfectly good if you can get it).  So no, I don't think that her barriers were all that unusual.  They were exaggerated to generate pity. 

[Grace Hopper]

WRT the ACT, remember that’s a composite score. If someone is verbally gifted and a natural voracious reader, they could possibly do quite well in the English and reading subtests. The scientific reasoning section score can also be aided by excellent reading comprehension. High scores in those areas can help balance out a much lower math score, which I believe is the one most affected by degree of formal learning. 
 

Factor in that some kids are just really good test takers. And as several have mentioned, the family may have non-neurotypical traits; I’ve seen that ADHD hyper focus ability in full swing and it is a wonder to behold. I don’t find her scoring a composite 28 an impossible feat. 

[Pam in CT]

[This is tangential to the Westovers...]

 

re testing generally -- there is both value and, I don't know the right word, not quite "limitations" and not quite "game-ability" either, but something of both.  It doesn't strike me as at all remarkable that a quite-bright kid, with a good dollop of determination and a practice workbook, could self-prepare to a 28 on the ACT. It's a good score but not a spectacular score, the scores track IQ more than particular content, some kids are just naturally able to decode test strategy without a lot of direct instruction on such strategies.  That a quite-bright kid with a good dollop of determination managed to pull it of does not, to me, suggest anything in particular about how dire or not-dire was her formal education.

 

And also, at the same time,

4 hours ago, Farrar said:

I don't buy into the idea that if people can overcome barriers, the barriers must not be a big deal or must not exist.

 

However much difference the lenses of personal perception alter the understanding of concrete facts (like the accident), and however slippery are memories (as Tara Westover scrupulously acknowledges in those footnotes, an honesty that is so rare in memoirs to be astonishing):

Not all kids are as quite-bright as she obviously is; and

Not all kids facing that degree of mental illness and abuse in their homes retain that dollop of determination.

[Jean in Newcastle]

To me, the ACT score is rather meaningless.  It's the advanced education that matters. 

[EKS]

39 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

To me, the ACT score is rather meaningless.  It's the advanced education that matters.

This is why I think that BYU only looking at ACT scores for homeschoolers is ridiculous. 

(I realize that I may be misinterpreting what you're saying here, so please let me know if you meant something else.)

[maize]

11 minutes ago, EKS said:

This is why I think that BYU only looking at ACT scores for homeschoolers is ridiculous. 

(I realize that I may be misinterpreting what you're saying here, so please let me know if you meant something else.)

BYU weighs ACT scores more heavily for homeschoolers,  but it has never been the only thing they look at. They weigh multiple factors, including multiple letters of recommendation (which Tara would have needed in order to apply) and essays. They just don't count GPA for homeschoolers. 

[EKS]

1 hour ago, maize said:

BYU weighs ACT scores more heavily for homeschoolers,  but it has never been the only thing they look at. They weigh multiple factors, including multiple letters of recommendation (which Tara would have needed in order to apply) and essays. They just don't count GPA for homeschoolers. 

I understand this.  I think that they should at least look at homeschoolers' transcripts even if they don't use the GPA.  But for some reason they aren't interested in my opinion 🤣

Edited May 26, 2023 by EKS

[maize]

3 hours ago, EKS said:

I understand this.  I think that they should at least look at homeschoolers' transcripts even if they don't use the GPA.  But for some reason they aren't interested in my opinion 🤣

They do have a place to list homeschooled classes in the current application. 

Like most schools with very large undergraduate programs I think they try to simplify admissions and process applications quickly. They don't currently look at ANY external transcripts directly prior to admissions; they tell applicants to enter information about classes and grades. There's a section for accredited classes and a separate section for unaccredited classes in the current application (at least, that's how it was when my daughter applied last year).

For admitted students, they require that any accredited transcripts be submitted prior to enrollment so they can verify that the student entered the information accurately.

Weighting standardized tests scores heavier for homeschooled applicants is an advantage to good testers and a disadvantage to poor testers. I don't love it, though it would have served me well had I applied as a homeschooler--my high school GPA was pretty lousy. 

Edited May 27, 2023 by maize

[Jean in Newcastle]

2 hours ago, EKS said:

This is why I think that BYU only looking at ACT scores for homeschoolers is ridiculous. 

(I realize that I may be misinterpreting what you're saying here, so please let me know if you meant something else.)

I am not disputing what you said here because I have no idea what BYU does or doesn’t do. But what I was trying to say is that people seem to be focusing on her ACT score as a way to tell if she was educated or not. In my opinion that score doesn’t mean much but her ability to succeed in higher education means that she must have had building blocks in place. Unless phds are dumbed down or something. (I actually don’t know what her phd is in). 

[maize]

Just now, Jean in Newcastle said:

 (I actually don’t know what her phd is in). 

History I think.

I very much doubt that Cambridge PhD's are dumbed down.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I just find it weird that schools publish stats on how many students get into university and even at times how many get advanced degrees as “proof” that they’ve provided a good education and here people are doubling down saying that she’s a poor uneducated girl who somehow not only got into university but was able to go from BA to Masters to Phd just because she has innate intelligence. I am not doubting that she’s smart but even smart people need a foundation for higher level learning. 

[Hen]

23 hours ago, EKS said:

YES!  We have this here.  I drives me crazy.

yes, one time, my parents, who watched the kids if we went away on a trip, and also had them overnight every Wednesday when they were small...once told me, concernedly, that my kids said they "never to do school work" at home. I replied back, something like, "Funny, the kids tell me that all they do at your house is watch t.v."...which I knew wasn't remotely true, when my kids told me this, my parents did a lot of outside stuff with them.  My parents digested this and didn't bring it up again. 😆

[maize]

Honestly, even I as homeschooling parent forget.

I was working on a transcript for my 11th grade son a couple of months ago. I was thinking he hadn't done much in the 2021-22 school year--he had some intense mental health struggles that year. But somehow I had forgotten most of what we did manage to fit in. I found records of online tutoring, outschool classes, theatre productions.

I remembered the mental health crisis--the emotionally intense stuff--and completely forgot all the schooling that did happen. Less than would have happened in an ordinary year, but far from the nothing I thought I remembered. 

[Jaybee]

When I was unpacking some boxes in our latest move, I found some of my old plan books. I was very impressed with myself and all we did, as well as my organizational skills! Sadly, I was trying to be wise and get rid of things, and I threw them away. I wish so much I had kept them to show to my oldest kids, especially.

[Corraleno]

4 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

people are doubling down saying that she’s a poor uneducated girl who somehow not only got into university but was able to go from BA to Masters to Phd just because she has innate intelligence. I am not doubting that she’s smart but even smart people need a foundation for higher level learning. 

But getting into grad school is totally dependent on what you do in undergrad, not what you did (or didn't) do before that. She obviously had access to books as a child, so even if her math wasn't up to snuff, an avid reader with a high IQ and an ACT prep book could absolutely get a 28 on the ACT, and once she had access to college classes and a college library, she had three and a half years to fill in any gaps before applying to grad school. Most college intro classes really do start from scratch and assume little to no background knowledge, and there are usually "Physics for Poets" type classes for humanities majors, so she wouldn't have been at much of a disadvantage even if she had little math and no science.

I had a decidedly mediocre public school education, and pretty much self-taught everything important that I needed to know. I cut a lot of classes, only took 2 years of math (with poor grades because I never did the homework but still passed the tests), only took 1 year of science, and I graduated a year early, at 16, so I took the SAT in September of what should have been junior year. I did zero prep (didn't even know that was a thing), just showed up and took the test cold and got a 1500, including 800 in English, because I'm a very fast reader with good analytical & comprehension skills. And despite not having a great background in math I was able to get a decent score because a lot of the math questions back then were sort of trick questions that actually had a quick easy solution if you noticed the trick. Once I got to college, I was easily able to fill in any gaps in my education and get into top grad schools.

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

20 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

But getting into grad school is totally dependent on what you do in undergrad, not what you did (or didn't) do before that. She obviously had access to books as a child, so even if her math wasn't up to snuff, an avid reader with a high IQ and an ACT prep book could absolutely get a 28 on the ACT, and once she had access to college classes and a college library, she had three and a half years to fill in any gaps before applying to grad school. Most college intro classes really do start from scratch and assume little to no background knowledge, and there are usually "Physics for Poets" type classes for humanities majors, so she wouldn't have been at much of a disadvantage even if she had little math and no science.

I had a decidedly mediocre public school education, and pretty much self-taught everything important that I needed to know. I cut a lot of classes, only took 2 years of math (with poor grades because I never did the homework but still passed the tests), only took 1 year of science, and I graduated a year early, at 16, so I took the SAT in September of what should have been junior year. I did zero prep (didn't even know that was a thing), just showed up and took the test cold and got a 1500, including 800 in English, because I'm a very fast reader with good analytical & comprehension skills. And despite not having a great background in math I was able to get a decent score because a lot of the math questions back then were sort of trick questions that actually had a quick easy solution if you noticed the trick. Once I got to college, I was easily able to fill in any gaps in my education and get into top grad schools.

 

I am not advocating the Westover Way to Education. But just as you had enough education to succeed in college, so did she. What I am doing is rejecting her self imposed martyrdom/ educational victim status. That’s what her book’s title is based on even if her book explores other factors as well. 

[Eos]

7 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I am not advocating the Westover Way to Education. But just as you had enough education to succeed in college, so did she. What I am doing is rejecting her self imposed martyrdom/ educational victim status. That’s what her book’s title is based on even if her book explores other factors as well. 

I agree that she had enough education to succeed in college but her victimhood, or rather survivorship, is in the area of abuse and mental health trauma. It seems to me that she puts the focus on educational neglect because maybe that how her middle-class target readers can most relate?

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

44 minutes ago, Eos said:

I agree that she had enough education to succeed in college but her victimhood, or rather survivorship, is in the area of abuse and mental health trauma. It seems to me that she puts the focus on educational neglect because maybe that how her middle-class target readers can most relate?

 

I have no opinion on the validity of abuse or mental health traumas and don’t feel like it’s my place as an outsider to evaluate that for someone else. But her (in my opinion) exaggerated emphasis on educational neglect has had a negative impact on people’s perceptions of homeschooling. That I care about. And that I object to. 
 

I don’t think that homeschooling itself is always best. I don’t think that all approaches to homeschooling are the best. And as I said, I would not be advocating her mom’s approach. But I also don’t think that it was properly and factually represented in the book. And whether she feels like that is going to hook the biggest readership is irrelevant to me compared to upholding the truth. 

[KungFuPanda]

I read it twice and never felt like she exaggerated her educational neglect. I just thought she was telling her own story and wasn’t trying to really say anything about homeschooling in general. I don’t think anything in that book points to her life being a normal example of anything. It felt more like a family that was living at the extremes with everything. It always seemed (to me) like she was very much talking about her parents in particular. 

[Farrar]

I find it odd that so many people are critical of the specifics of her pre-college education and upbringing about a book that was so very open about the unreliability of individual memory and the ways that personal experience impact how we remember things. In so many ways, she makes it clear that it's her own personal experience of events and the things that stood out to her and formed who she is.

Straight up, my kids don't remember even a tenth of the stuff we did throughout their homeschool experience. The other day, BalletBoy was reading (BalletBoy reads for fun now. It's totally weird, but that's another story.) All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm like, oh, you're rereading it. He's like, no, I've never read it. I'm like, 100% I assigned that book to you and you sat and discussed it with me and picked quotes out of it in 10th grade. I suspected at the time he didn't finish it, but I know he read at least the first half because I watched him do it. No I didn't, he tells me. Yes, you did, I insist. Oh, he says. Well, maybe, I don't remember that at all. OMG. I just think memory is like that. It's not a lie or even a misrepresentation. Memory blows certain things up and shrinks other things down. 

I find it impossible to believe given the totality of information, that Tara Westover didn't have a chaotic upbringing where she was prevented from some key educational and social milestones. Did she maybe have things that she forgot because the chaotic, sometimes violent, sometimes dissonant moments where she was not in synch with the world around her outside her family loom larger in her memory? I mean, that sure would make sense.

[prairiewindmomma]

I flipped open the book this morning since I haven’t read it in a few years—it’s as I remember it. I think of it as mental illness + right wing Mormonism. It’s in that same niche of un wellness that Lori Vallow dwelled in—-not trusting the government (Tara’s birth was unregistered, she had never been seen by a doctor, she didn’t exist on government records anywhere), her dad emphasized obscure points of the scriptures at times (no milk), and there was an over emphasis on self reliance (the very Brigham Young notions of forcing mom to train with a midwife, herbs, stockpiling weapons), and believing some segment of the church had “fallen” (his Illuminati had taken over BYU rant)….

In chapter 5, Tara describes how homeschooling went down at their house, and it was wholly inadequate. I think we’ve focused on that bit because it’s one area where we can pit stories against each other head to head, or because some who have not read Educated think the book is about homeschooling….but homeschooling is only discussed in a few pages.

In chapter 17, she goes off to BYU, and she begins to get a glimpse of a “normal” life in which she realizes how abnormal her growing up was. I think this is why the book was titled Educated. She is finally discovering life outside of what her parents had taught her, and is discovering how skewed their indoctrination (likely driven by dad’s mental illness) was.

[maize]

My primary takeaway was very much that Tara's childhood was shaped largely by her father's mental illness and the accompanying irrationality and paranoia. 

[Farrar]

2 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

In chapter 5, Tara describes how homeschooling went down at their house, and it was wholly inadequate. I think we’ve focused on that bit because it’s one area where we can pit stories against each other head to head, or because some who have not read Educated think the book is about homeschooling….but homeschooling is only discussed in a few pages.

I think even if that doesn't really accurately express the homeschooling she received (which, I'm not saying either way), the other experiences were so overwhelming and the other limitations were so formative that it doesn't matter that much in the end. 

Every time homeschoolers get snippy about this book, I think, geez, stop being so defensive. It's not ABOUT YOU. Not everything is about you. One person describing how one particular homeschool was deeply inadequate to prepare her for life just isn't about your homeschool.

[Eos]

10 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

But her (in my opinion) exaggerated emphasis on educational neglect has had a negative impact on people’s perceptions of homeschooling. That I care about. And that I object to. 

I agree.  In that sense it's is similar to the book Midwives that gave a horrible and truly inaccurate image of a homebirth emergency gone awry and plenty of people thought yup, that's about right for homebirth. 

My sister gave Educated to my daughter for a present, we couldn't quite figure out what she was trying to say.

[Pam in CT]

re what the gestalt/  meaning of the title of Educated was "about"

12 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I am not advocating the Westover Way to Education. But just as you had enough education to succeed in college, so did she. What I am doing is rejecting her self imposed martyrdom/ educational victim status. That’s what her book’s title is based on even if her book explores other factors as well. 

 

4 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I have no opinion on the validity of abuse or mental health traumas and don’t feel like it’s my place as an outsider to evaluate that for someone else. But her (in my opinion) exaggerated emphasis on educational neglect has had a negative impact on people’s perceptions of homeschooling. That I care about. And that I object to. 
 

I don’t think that homeschooling itself is always best. I don’t think that all approaches to homeschooling are the best. And as I said, I would not be advocating her mom’s approach. But I also don’t think that it was properly and factually represented in the book. And whether she feels like that is going to hook the biggest readership is irrelevant to me compared to upholding the truth. 

That is interesting.  My own reading of the overall gestalt of the book was not "woe is me" around homeschooling, so much as a celebration of the possibility of autodidactic education -- that, for me, was meaning underpinning the title. For me, "Educated" referred to everything she did, on her own steam, before BYU / Cambridge and ongoing thereafter, including the self-reflection and cross-checking with her siblings in the writing of the book. 

My daughter's kinda shi-shi boarding school used Educated as their whole-school Community Read the year it came out, and Westover came to speak, and that was, from her reporting, the gist of the community take -- y'all are lucky to be here of course, but the thing about real learning is, it's more a matter of curiosity and effort that you bring to it, than anybody else pouring stuff into you like you're some kind of vessel.

FWIW when I read the book (at daughter's recommendation) the "neglect" I took away from it was around psychological estrangement/ abuse and refusal to avail of medical resources when warranted.

 

[And the difference in our reading experiences itself sort of illustrates the inherent subjectivity of remembered experience, KWIM? We read the same words in the same book at about the same time, but we brought different selves and experiences and worldviews and that very much impacts what we took away.]