Sex education is widely adopted by many countries in the world in order to guide the sexual behaviors of people before marriage especially the adolescents through the awareness of sexual knowledge (Spanier, 1976). However, in some countries including the United States, the sex education presents a contentious debate associated its ethical functions and effectiveness. On the one side, the conservative groups criticize the sex education as the stimulating factor that raises the sexual knowledge of adolescents and increases their sexual behaviors before marriage (Sabia, 2006). On the other side, the liberal groups agree with the sex education because it positively influences on the pregnancy of …show more content…
The article points out that the sex education empowers the controllably sexual activities. On the one hand, the sex education actually increases the accessibility of the adolescents to the sexual knowledge and the willingness of sexual attempts. On the other hand, the sex education correctly fosters the contraceptive beliefs of the adolescents that significantly reduce the risky sexual activities. In other words, the adverse effects on the sexual health of the adolescents from the risky sexual activities are actually controlled by the contraceptive education. Accordingly, although the sex education usually fails to reduce the adolescent sexual activities, it is still effective to manage the risky sexual activities so that the unplanned pregnancy and the transmission of STDs are well …show more content…
The important thing associated with the formal sex education is that the educational contents of these programs are correct without the influences by the environmental and social factors. In other words, the characteristics of the formal sex education are literary and conceptual so that it more focuses on the education of the appropriate gender ideology, the contraceptive beliefs and attitudes, and the sexual knowledge for the adolescents in order to protect their sexual health and psychological health (Spanier, 1976). However, the formal sex education significantly raises an issue that it usually fails to protect the sexual health for the adolescents due to the youth sexual empowerment caused by the sexual knowledge from the school-based sex education programs (Sabia, 2006). Accordingly, the debate associated with the use of the formal sex education in the schools rises in the modern society that significantly limits the promotion of the formal sex education. As the illustration by Strouse and Fabes (1985), although the formal sex education is hard to access because many schools criticize its functions to protect the sexual health of the adolescents, it is still significant because it correctly educates the appropriate sexual ideology for the adolescents in order to avoid