I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself.
Tara WestoverRead
An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.
Interpretation
Education shapes a person's character and identity, rather than just preparing them for a job.
Tara Westover's quote emphasizes that the true purpose of education goes beyond mere vocational training; it is fundamentally about personal development and growth. Education molds a person's values, perspectives, and self-awareness, ultimately leading to a more profound and fulfilling life rather than just a means of financial sustenance.
In practice
During a graduation speech focusing on personal growth.
I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself.
I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring.
We think love is noble, and in some ways, it is. But in some ways, it isn't. Love is just love. And sometimes people do terrible things because of it.
I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.
I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.
Although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, our religion was not the same. I could stand with my family or with the gentiles... but there was no foothold in between.
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.
Maybe all wondrous books appear in our lives the way Miloβs tollbooth appears, an inexplicable gift, cast up by some curious chance that comes to feel, after we have finished and fallen in love with the book, like the workings of a secret purpose. Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious-the most phantasmal-is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.
Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.
We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.