On friday I was watched an interview of Shelby Knox done by David Brancaccio on Now. It was a good interview, and she was a very articulate young woman. They mentioned a P.O.V. episode that would be airing about her work to get sex education in Lubbock, Texas public schools.
This is an issue that I can get really passionate about. It drives me up the wall when conservative christians rally against sex education while STD and pregnancy rates are running wild (Lubbock has one of the highest pregnancy rates in the country). Too much “It’s not my kid having sex” and “It’s the parents job” going around, while kids are getting hurt.
But this documentary? It wasn’t what I expected.
Most of the facts that were communicated were just written on the screen, I missed most of them because my reception for that PBS channel isn’t the best. These statistics are vital to understanding the documentary, they should have been more prominently placed.
And they portrayed all those in the Baptist clergy seem cultish and close-minded. Is this reality? If so I’m glad I don’t live in the south.
The documentary mostly just wandered through the politics of the Lubbock Youth Commission, and made Shelby look like a weepy, attention-craving teenager. It was more a story about Shelby specifically rather than the issue.
I guess I just expect more from documentaries, especially ones tackling sensitive issues.