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
During my first semester of college, I raised my hand in a class and asked the professor to define a word I didn't know. The word was holocaust, and I had to ask because, until that moment, I had never heard of it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Asking questions is crucial for learning, even about difficult topics.
In this quote, Tara Westover reflects on her experience of seeking knowledge in an academic setting, highlighting the importance of curiosity and the courage to ask questions, especially about significant historical events. Her admission of ignorance regarding the term 'holocaust' underscores that education is a lifelong journey and that acknowledging what we don't know is the first step toward learning and understanding complex subjects.
Themes
EducationCuriosityKnowledgeLearningHolocaust
In practice
Example use cases
In a classroom setting, when discussing the importance of knowledge, you could use this quote to illustrate how asking questions fosters learning.
More from Tara Westover
All quotes →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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Tara WestoverRead
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