Our most explosive sex education issue: birth control.

Abstract

In order to visualize the role of the school in population and birth control education, information is needed regarding the major policies currently being debated and advocated and the pro and con arguments being advanced. The traditional policy has been to exclude birth control education. Some of the reasons advanced for excluding birth control education are the following: 1) including birth control information gives tacit approval for high school students to engage in premarital sexual intercourse; 2) teaching contraceptive methods alone would not solve the problem of premarital pregnancy, because unwed adolescent pregnancy is sometimes because of human factors other than ignorance and lack of contraceptives; and 3) birth control is a public health and medical rather than an educational problem. An emerging new policy emphasizes teaching about population and birth control. Reasons in support of this policy include: 1) provide accurate knowledge regarding birth control from reliable sources to counteract misconceptions gained from poorly informed friends and other sources; and 2) the assumption that giving birth control information to adolescents would lead to sexual immorality and promiscuity is unproven. There is a need to develop an ecologic-ethical approach to family life and sex education in the United States. A need exists for being concerned with all the major dimensions of human sexuality and sexual behavior in sex education -- the biologic, psychologic, social, ethical and religious. The concept approach can help to focus the teaching-learning process and experiences on basic principles and generalization.