Last Wednesday evening, Dr. Olivia Cousins, Professor and Chairperson of Health Education, gathered a small group of students to watch a documentary film. The movie, “The Education of Shelby Knox,” is making quite a stir in the worlds of documentary filmmaking and women’s health. It won at Sundance for its cinematography, aired on PBS’s Point of View Series, and Shelby, the real-life heroine of the movie, is being courted for interviews by such media flagships as Good Morning America and The O’Reilly Factor.
“The Education of Shelby Knox” chronicles Shelby’s years in a Lubbock, Texas high school plagued with high rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The school system was committed to an abstinence-only curriculum, and Shelby, who comes from a conservative church-going family, eventually partnered with the gay and lesbian students to advocate for a more comprehensive sex education program.
Rose Rosenblatt and Marion Lipschutz, the film’s directors and producers, made the film with a large PBS audience in mind, but Ms Lipschutz says that the pro-choice community and youth activists have shown the most interest. This did not surprise her, but the social and political climate in the red state of Texas did.
“Everyone is talking about how polarized we are, but on the ground it’s more purple. The same restaurants, the same grocery stores – even in the reddest state, just over 100 miles from President Bush’s hometown, liberals are still present.”
When asked about the experience of having her adolescence documented for the public to watch, Shelby is honest. “At first, I was a ham,” she said. “Then I became more thoughtful. The cameras give people the right to judge.” Then she shrugged and slouched down in her chair. “After four years, I forgot about the cameras.”
Shelby is equally frank about coming to terms with her evangelical upbringing. “Love is at the core of Christianity. I think Jesus was a liberal. He said for the person without sin to cast the first stone at the adulterous woman. If the woman was a gay man, do you think Jesus would have said ‘stone him’?”
For more information about “The Education of Shelby Knox,” go to www.ShelbyKnox.org.
