WEBVTT 00:01.966 --> 00:04.333 align:left position:20%,start line:71% size:70% AMNA NAWAZ: It's graduation season, and the memoir "Educated" is the may pick for the 00:04.333 --> 00:08.666 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% "NewsHour" Book Club, in collaboration with The New York Times, Now Read This. 00:08.666 --> 00:13.666 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% Its author, Tara Westover, had no formal education until she attended college. 00:15.133 --> 00:17.200 align:left position:10%,start line:83% size:80% The unlikely path that led her there was entirely self-made. 00:17.200 --> 00:22.200 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% Tonight, she shares her Humble Opinion on how an education has very little to do with 00:23.133 --> 00:25.033 align:left position:20%,start line:89% size:70% the schools you attend. 00:25.033 --> 00:28.066 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% TARA WESTOVER, Author, "Educated": During my first semester of college, I raised my 00:28.066 --> 00:32.133 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% hand in a class and asked the professor to define a word I didn't know. 00:32.133 --> 00:37.133 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% The word was holocaust, and I had to ask, because, until that moment, I had never heard 00:37.866 --> 00:40.066 align:left position:40%,start line:89% size:50% of it. 00:40.066 --> 00:43.933 align:left position:20%,start line:71% size:70% I had been raised in the mountains of Idaho by a father who distrusted many of the institutions 00:46.033 --> 00:48.966 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% that people take for granted: public education, doctors and hospitals, and the government. 00:50.633 --> 00:54.800 align:left position:20%,start line:77% size:70% The result was, I was never put in school to taken to the doctor. 00:54.800 --> 00:58.966 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% I didn't even have a birth certificate until I was 9 years old, which meant that, according 00:58.966 --> 01:03.333 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% to the state of Idaho, I just didn't exist. 01:03.333 --> 01:08.333 align:left position:20%,start line:71% size:70% My older brother bought textbooks and was able to teach himself enough to go to college. 01:09.800 --> 01:13.100 align:left position:10%,start line:83% size:80% When I was 16, he returned and told me to do the same thing. 01:13.100 --> 01:18.100 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% I taught myself algebra and a little grammar, and somehow I scraped a high enough score 01:20.566 --> 01:23.266 align:left position:10%,start line:71% size:80% on the ACT to be admitted to Brigham Young University, even though I had no formal education. 01:25.300 --> 01:30.200 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% That is how I came to be in that lecture hall, asking aloud, what is a holocaust? 01:32.133 --> 01:35.233 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% Because I had never been allowed to go to school, the only history I had learned was 01:35.233 --> 01:37.533 align:left position:10%,start line:89% size:80% the history my father taught me. 01:37.533 --> 01:40.233 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% His perspective was my perspective. 01:40.233 --> 01:45.266 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% He said pharmaceuticals would permanently damage my body, so I had never taken so much 01:45.266 --> 01:47.166 align:left position:30%,start line:89% size:60% as a Tylenol. 01:47.166 --> 01:51.833 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% He said the government had been corrupted by the illuminati, so I said that, too. 01:51.833 --> 01:54.033 align:left position:10%,start line:89% size:80% His ideas had become my ideas. 01:54.033 --> 01:57.233 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% His fears had become my fears also. 01:57.233 --> 02:00.900 align:left position:10%,start line:83% size:80% Once I discovered education, I studied for 10 years. 02:00.900 --> 02:05.900 align:left position:10%,start line:71% size:80% I sought out as many ideas and perspectives as I could find, and I used that body of knowledge 02:06.766 --> 02:09.100 align:left position:10%,start line:89% size:80% to try to construct my own mind. 02:09.100 --> 02:13.333 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% This pursuit would take me to some of the most respected universities in the world, 02:13.333 --> 02:15.800 align:left position:10%,start line:89% size:80% to Cambridge, to Harvard. 02:15.800 --> 02:18.500 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% But it would also take me away from my family. 02:18.500 --> 02:23.500 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% I would become a different person, and that person could no longer go home. 02:25.400 --> 02:28.900 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% What I would come to understand from this journey is that an education is not the same 02:28.900 --> 02:30.933 align:left position:20%,start line:89% size:70% thing as a school. 02:30.933 --> 02:35.233 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% A school is merely the institution through which an education is offered. 02:35.233 --> 02:38.266 align:left position:10%,start line:83% size:80% An education is something you take for yourself. 02:38.266 --> 02:40.733 align:left position:10%,start line:89% size:80% It's a process of becoming. 02:40.733 --> 02:44.033 align:left position:10%,start line:83% size:80% That is the power of it, and that is the danger of it. 02:44.033 --> 02:49.033 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% For some, the word educated has come to mean institutionalized, but it doesn't have to 02:49.666 --> 02:50.933 align:left position:30%,start line:89% size:60% mean that. 02:50.933 --> 02:53.600 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% An education is the remaking of a person. 02:53.600 --> 02:58.566 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% You can submit to that remaking passively, or you can take an active part. 02:59.766 --> 03:01.733 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% To choose the second is to remake yourself. 03:01.733 --> 03:04.700 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% To choose the first is to be made by others. 03:04.700 --> 03:09.700 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% AMNA NAWAZ: To hear more from Westover, you can join our book club through our Facebook 03:10.433 --> 03:12.466 align:left position:20%,start line:89% size:70% group, Now Read This. 03:12.466 --> 03:17.000 align:left position:10%,start line:77% size:80% And right now, online, Westover shares insight into how she writes, what she reads and why 03:18.000 --> 03:21.733 align:left position:20%,start line:83% size:70% - - quote -- "Inspiration is a myth." 03:21.733 --> 03:22.800 align:left position:10%,start line:89% size:80% That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.