The Education of Shelby Knox

March 11, 2010 | By In Article |

Other Related Posts:




6 Comments so far

  1. TerryMarietta31 on March 11th, 2010

    I propose not to wait until you earn enough cash to buy goods! You can take the mortgage loans or financial loan and feel yourself fine

  2. Barry Hampe on March 11th, 2010

    Like every true revolutionary, Shelby Knox, a tenth grader in Lubbock, Texas, just started out to do something she thought was right. The Lubbock schools offered no sex education beyond advocating abstinence before marriage. And, although Shelby had taken a pledge of chastity until marriage at her church, she couldn’t overlook the fact that many of her classmates were getting pregnant. As a member of the city youth council, she proposed adding true sex education to the curriculum.

    And that put her in direct conflict with the superintendent of schools, the school board, and her own pastor. Her parents, conservative, Southern Baptist Republicans, while clearly wishing she had not taken on this cause, supported her right to do so. Toward the end of the film they show their support by joining her in a demonstration favoring a cause they clearly would rather not endorse. Covering three years in Shelby’s life, this excellent documentary by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, digs hard for the visual evidence to tell the story of a determined young woman.

    Writer and filmmaker Barry Hampe is doing research for a new book on Filming Behavior. [http://www.makingdocumentaryfilms.com/newbookfilmingbehavior.html]

    Rating: 5 / 5

  3. Cody on March 11th, 2010

    Shelby Knox is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. She knows what is right, and she pushes for it. I had the chance of meeting her in person, and was not disappointed. She is in person as she is in the movie. The makers of this movie deserve all the praise they recieve, as this movie not only is about the education of a teenage, but also about the education of a country.

    Shelby Knox is my hero!
    Rating: 5 / 5

  4. Ana Mardoll on March 11th, 2010

    Education of Shelby Knox / B000GG4XYC

    *Spoilers*

    I love documentaries (probably a little too much!) and as soon as I heard about The Education of Shelby Knox, I had to rush out and rent it. This is a nice little documentary about the fight of one girl to obtain comprehensive sex education in her school district and, along the way, obtain the right of gay students to not be discriminated against.

    Shelby Knox is, in many ways, the embodiment of our wonderful American teenagers. She earnestly cares about fairness and equality. Shelby lives in a city with one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country and she wants her friends and schoolmates to be given proper education and facts about sex and sexual consequences in order that they be prepared for their future lives. She also hurts, genuinely, to see the gay students at her school openly discriminated against. Shelby is not, herself, gay or sexually active, but she recognizes unfairness when she sees it and she obviously has a passion for righting wrongs. She is also, like most teenagers, blessed with an ounce of self-centeredness which buoys her in times of trial and setbacks.

    Shelby does not succeed in her quest – through no fault of her own, I might add – but she fails with grace and dignity. She excels in spite of small-town judgmental attitudes that judge her suspiciously for her activism and her associations. She flourishes in spite of a home life that, in my humble opinion, seems unfortunately authoritarian – her parents regularly discourage her (overtly and subversively) against her activism, particularly with regards to gay rights. They sort of come around in the end to put on a good face, but in my opinion their lack of enthusiastic support for their giving, caring daughter is very stifling.

    This isn’t your usual documentary. There are almost no experts interviewed, which I feel would have been a huge bonus to the enterprise, and would have warranted five stars. This is, instead the story of one young woman’s crusade, as it happened. Although the editing can be a bit sloppy at times, I recommend this documentary, if only for the bits involving the True Love Waits pastor and his wonderful speech in which he successfully leaves students with the impression that you can get AIDS merely from shaking someone’s hand. Ah, American education at its finest.

    I do not own this movie – I rented this through my Blockbuster Online account.
    Rating: 4 / 5

  5. Dutch Girl on March 11th, 2010

    I enjoyed this movie very much. I aim to use it in my (Dutch) church youthgroup as a start for a discussion about sexuality/abstinence/homosexuality and how “we Christians” think about these topics. I think I can easily fill two evenings with this movie. I can only hope my youthgroup kids will come of age in a similar manner as Shelby does.

    I was very impressed with the way Shelby positioned herself in the discussion and how she went about gathering information. Evenso impressive are her parents. Although they don’t always agree with their daughter, they keep on communicating with her in a very open manner. I can only hope there will be more parents that remember that talking with their kids is the only way to keep them safe.

    And having worked almost 10 years as a special victims detective, I truly believe that educating kids (even at gradeschool ages) about sexuality, is the only prevention of sexual abuse that is effective.
    Rating: 5 / 5

  6. Maryjo M. Oster on March 12th, 2010

    Excellent film about a young girl from Lubbock, TX and her personal and political journey to adulthood as she comes to terms with her own Christian values about abstinence until marriage and her new revelations about the real world and the real people that are left out of that equation. Shelby takes on the issue of school based sex education in her heavily religious, ultra-conservative town fighting for actual “education” about sex and sexual issues as opposed to the strict abstinence-only policy in place in her school district that is clearly not effective in helping teens to delay sexual activity given their extremely high teen pregnancy and STD rates. I would have liked to see the film go into a little more detail about the issue of teens having sex because there’s “nothing better to do.” This issue is raised briefly during the opening credits and again during the closing credits, but is not really explored. The PBS documentary “The Lost Children of Rockdale County” explores this issue in greater depth. Overall, however, I thought the film did an excellent job of portraying Shelby’s development as an individual and as an activist. It was also very heartwarming to see how her conservative Republican parents were so supportive of her passions, despite how they may have contrasted with their own personal values. I would wholeheartedly recommend this film to anyone interested in youth- and/or school-relevant issues.
    Rating: 4 / 5

Leave a reply

CAPTCHA Image
*

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree