Student Question

Why is it significant that Tara in Educated never heard about the Holocaust?

Quick answer:

In Educated, what is important about Tara's never having heard of the Holocaust is that it shows how she's been kept in ignorance by her father. Homeschooled by her far-right survivalist father, Tara has learned very little about the outside world, including history. So when she finally starts getting a formal education, she soon realizes just how little she actually knows.

Expert Answers

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Tara's father, Gene, is a crazed conspiracy theorist and ultra-right-wing survivalist who homeschools his children as he believes that if they attend public schools, they'll be brainwashed by the government. Unfortunately, Gene's ideas of educating his children leave a lot to be desired. Instead of broadening their horizons like a good education's supposed to do, his homeschooling methods keep the Westover kids in a shocking state of ignorance.

The children's education, such as it is, is entirely self-directed, but with a complete lack of educational resources available, education in any meaningful sense of the word is impossible. It's only when Tara starts taking classes at Brigham Young University that she finally realizes just how little she knows about the world and how much damage has been done to her by Gene.

While sitting in a lecture on Western art one day, she notices this strange word in her textbook: Holocaust. As Tara has never learned about the Nazis' murder of six million Jews, she hasn't a clue what the word means. When she asks her professor what it means, the embarrassed silence in class is deafening. But Tara's ignorance is not her fault; she's been kept in a state of ignorance, whose neglect of her formal education is tantamount to child abuse.

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