What film or play would compare well with Educated by Tara Westover?

November 28, 2020 1:45 PM

I teach a comparative text study to high school students and am considering Educated as a possible text of study. Can you recommend some films, plays or a novella that would compare well, thematically?

The students are about 16, and the second text needs to be reasonably short and accessible (hence asking for a film) for them to not get overwhelmed.

posted by jojobobo to Education (14 answers total)

Room (TW:SA)
posted by DarlingBri at 1:51 PM on November 28, 2020

The Glass Castle (movie)
posted by Sassyfras at 1:52 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

My Fair Lady? The book makes reference to Pygmalion at one point.
posted by Comet Bug at 2:16 PM on November 28, 2020

October Sky.
The Corn Is Green.

I think that an interesting discussion could be had about the influence of good teachers, and the right teacher at the right time. Westover got some extraordinarily lucky breaks from teachers who saw her potential and made things happen for her.
posted by apparently at 2:44 PM on November 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

Westover is reasonably active on Twitter, including recommending texts and audiovisual materials that resonate with her. You should look at what she has promoted, or Tweet at her with this question and see what she recommends.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 2:57 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

For some livelier discussions, it might be interesting to compare a text that offers a counternarrative to Westover's "bougie-culture-saved-my-life" story.

Madame Bovary would be the classic in this vein, but I'm not sure there's a good film version. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is another excellent exploration of the downsides of bad middle-class education, and the film with Maggie Smith is great.
posted by Bardolph at 3:29 PM on November 28, 2020

Best answer: Two films about children who are abandoned (figuratively and literally) by the adults who are supposed to be caring for them, and their determination and creativity in survival:

Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Beasts of the Southern Wild

You’ll want to preview them for suitability for your group, of course.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:32 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

One Of Us is a documentary about the experience of 3 ex-Haredi Jews in Brooklyn and touches on many of the same themes from a different fundamentalist religious perspective.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:14 PM on November 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Moonlight. Common themes: social mobility (or lack thereof), the long-term impact of growing up with a troubled parent, sexual repression, betrayal, the importance of mentors, identity that conflicts with culture of origin. Your students might need help uncovering the subtleties, depending on what sorts of teens they are, but the comparison would be rewarding, I think.
posted by Comet Bug at 5:20 PM on November 28, 2020

The documentary "Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)" might be a good one.
posted by perhapses at 6:10 PM on November 28, 2020

This is an oddball suggestion, but Approaching the Elephant is a 2014 documentary film about a free school in the US, and about how the participants deal (or cannot deal) with bullying within the school. The children in the school are preteens, I think, so your students would be able to readily remember a time not long ago when they were that age. Comparing it to Educated, I think they both examine what different forms of education do well/badly, in particular what unintended effects happen in systems that are trying to allow for "freedom", bullying and the difficulty of developing the resilience and intellectual fortitude necessary to stand up to it, and the ways that thinking about political science in the classroom can translate into day-to-day decisions.
posted by brainwane at 10:55 PM on November 28, 2020

Best answer: What a wonderful book Educated is.

Brooklyn is a great, quiet little movie about a bright young woman trying to move on from the small-mindedness of a village in Ireland while being pulled back by family obligations.
posted by The Loch Ness Monster at 8:02 AM on November 29, 2020

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman has an associated film which I have not seen.
posted by aniola at 12:44 PM on December 1, 2020

Unorthodox is a four-episode show - it's on Netflix and was excellent.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:48 PM on December 1, 2020