The Education of Shelby Knox

This award-winning documentary from Sundance 2005 shadows politically active teenager Shelby Knox, a conservatively raised Lubbock, Texas, student who morphs into a liberal feminist while fighting for sex education in public schools. The Lubbock school district advocates an “abstinence only” policy for students—their only tangible alternative is a local pastor who discourages condom use and promotes abstinence vows—even though the city’s teen-pregnancy and sexually-transmitted-disease rates are off the charts. It’s a good film, but as Knox expands her political consciousness and starts butting heads with the school board and her fellow members on the Lubbock Youth Commission, the directors become overly enamored with her at the expense of the issues, and it starts to feel like a sermon to the converted.