Educated: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

A month after the accident, during morning scripture one Sunday, Tyler nervously makes an announcement to the family: he is going to college. Dad is impassive and stonily silent at the news. Tyler will be the third of Tara’s brothers to leave home, after Tony, the eldest, and Shawn, who has “taken off” after a fight with Dad months earlier. When the young Tara asks what “college” is, Dad tells her that it is “extra school for people too dumb to learn the first time around.” Tara watches Tyler brace himself for one of Dad’s lectures, and, sure enough, Dad begins pontificating about how all college professors are either “bona fide agent[s] of the Illuminati” or “high-minded” braggarts who believe themselves “greater than God.”

Mother tells Dad that he is wasting his time trying to talk the sensitive but staunch Tyler out of his decision, and then goes downstairs with a migraine—lately, Mother always has migraines, and frequently spends days on end in the basement. Tyler tries to explain to Dad that the school he wants to go to is run by the Mormon church, but Dad insists that the “Illuminati have infiltrated the church” in order to “raise up a generation of Socialist Mormons.”

Tara considers the “bizarre fact of” her brother Tyler’s mere existence within the Westover clan. Where Tara’s other brothers were “like a pack of wolves,” violent and quick to fight, Tyler has always liked books and quiet. While the other boys roughhoused, Tyler spent his youth listening to classical music CDs. Tyler’s stutter marked him as different and timid, and though he and Tara never talked much, they bonded over music and enjoyed a CD together every night.

Mother homeschooled the Westover children, though Dad didn’t even think they should be learning the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic she taught them. Tyler excelled at “school,” even as Tara and the others floundered when it came to studying. If Tara flipped through a math text book and touched fifty pages, she’d tell Mother she’d done fifty pages of math, and Mother would marvel at her fast pace, which would “never be possible in the public school.”

Though Dad disagreed with education, he never outright stopped the kids from learning—they could teach themselves anything they wanted after their chores on the farm and in the junkyard were complete. Only Tony, Shawn, and Tyler—the eldest boys—had ever set foot in school, though Dad pulled them out when his delusions about the Illuminati worsened. Tyler, however, struggled as hard as he could to find time to study and teach himself, often butting heads with Dad over his choice to immerse himself in learning.

As the summer goes by, Tara convinces herself that Tyler won’t really leave and go off to college. When she accompanies him on a visit to Grandma-over-in-town and Grandpa-over-in-town’s house, however, they remark on how he’ll soon be going away to school, and Tara finds herself frightened and sad. In the middle of summer, Dad announces that he is converting all of the family’s paper money into silver coins in preparation for “The End.” When Tyler, too, converts some of his savings into silver, Tara convinces herself that he is staying after all.

One morning in August, Tara awakes to find Tyler packing all of his belongings. He tells Tara that he’s leaving her favorite CD behind for her. She grows “crazed” with sadness and rage, and runs out into the yard so that she doesn’t have to watch him drive away. Just before Tyler leaves, though, Tara runs up to his car to give him a hug goodbye. Tyler tells Tara he’ll miss her, then gets back in the car and goes.

A month after Tyler’s departure, Tara is spending an afternoon at Grandma-over-in-town’s house, and they are baking cookies. When Tara uses the bathroom and comes out without washing her hands, Grandma reprimands her, but Tara replies that the Westovers “don’t even have soap in the bathroom at home.” Grandma, stunned, remarks only that she raised Faye “better than that.” Grandma takes Tara back into the bathroom and forces her to wash her hands. When Dad picks Tara up that evening, Grandma asks him why he wouldn’t teach his children to wash their hands after they use the bathroom. Gene replies that he teaches his children, instead, “not to piss on their hands.”