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AMNA NAWAZ: It's 
graduation season, and 
the memoir "Educated" 
is the may pick for the

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"NewsHour" Book Club, in 
collaboration with The New 
York Times, Now Read This.

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Its author, Tara Westover, 
had no formal education 
until she attended college.

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The unlikely path that led her 
there was entirely self-made.

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Tonight, she shares her Humble 
Opinion on how an education 
has very little to do with

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the schools you attend.

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TARA WESTOVER, Author, 
"Educated": During my first 
semester of college, I raised my

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hand in a class and asked 
the professor to define 
a word I didn't know.

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The word was holocaust, and 
I had to ask, because, until 
that moment, I had never heard

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of it.

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I had been raised in the 
mountains of Idaho by 
a father who distrusted 
many of the institutions

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that people take for granted: 
public education, doctors and 
hospitals, and the government.

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The result was, I was 
never put in school to 
taken to the doctor.

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I didn't even have a birth 
certificate until I was 9 years 
old, which meant that, according

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to the state of Idaho, 
I just didn't exist.

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My older brother bought 
textbooks and was able 
to teach himself enough 
to go to college.

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When I was 16, he returned and 
told me to do the same thing.

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I taught myself algebra and 
a little grammar, and somehow 
I scraped a high enough score

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on the ACT to be 
admitted to Brigham Young 
University, even though I 
had no formal education.

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That is how I came to be in 
that lecture hall, asking 
aloud, what is a holocaust?

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Because I had never been 
allowed to go to school, the 
only history I had learned was

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the history my father taught me.

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His perspective 
was my perspective.

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He said pharmaceuticals would 
permanently damage my body, 
so I had never taken so much

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as a Tylenol.

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He said the government 
had been corrupted by the 
illuminati, so I said that, too.

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His ideas had become my ideas.

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His fears had become 
my fears also.

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Once I discovered education, 
I studied for 10 years.

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I sought out as many 
ideas and perspectives as 
I could find, and I used 
that body of knowledge

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to try to construct my own mind.

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This pursuit would take me 
to some of the most respected 
universities in the world,

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to Cambridge, to Harvard.

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But it would also take 
me away from my family.

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I would become a different 
person, and that person 
could no longer go home.

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What I would come to understand 
from this journey is that 
an education is not the same

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thing as a school.

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A school is merely the 
institution through which 
an education is offered.

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An education is something 
you take for yourself.

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It's a process of becoming.

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That is the power of it, and 
that is the danger of it.

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For some, the word educated has 
come to mean institutionalized, 
but it doesn't have to

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mean that.

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An education is the 
remaking of a person.

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You can submit to that 
remaking passively, or you 
can take an active part.

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To choose the second 
is to remake yourself.

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To choose the first is 
to be made by others.

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AMNA NAWAZ: To hear more from 
Westover, you can join our 
book club through our Facebook

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group, Now Read This.

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And right now, online, Westover 
shares insight into how she 
writes, what she reads and why

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- - quote -- 
"Inspiration is a myth."

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That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.