Sex education hasn't failed here because sex education doesn't work, per se, but because we, as a country, refuse to deal rationally with sex, being overly influenced by the purient prudishness of the religious folks who can't abide talking frankly about the realities of sex with our youth. The 'bury our heads in the sand and promote abstinence' approach to sex education is destined to fail, and, no surprise, it has failed.
Some of you may not recall years ago under President Clinton when the Surgeon General (a black middle-aged lady, I think her name was Jocelyn Elders) dared raise the issue of ************ it raised such a sh**storm because it offended the tender sexual sensibilities of all the good religious folks. Guess what? Teenagers ********** (so do many if not most adults, even religious folks), they've been doing it for millennia and and they will do it as long as they have a sex drive. We simply can't discuss sex rationally in this country, just like we can't discuss guns, immigration, and any number of other issues. Meanwhile, these issues continue to fester and create significant damage to society, while we fiddle around unable to have any discourse because too many people hold too many irrational, emotional, ideologically/religiously driven hangups.
Yep, American exceptionalism in action.
Holy cow, this website actually censors out the word mastur......bation? See what I'm talking about?