High School Health Education Implementation Strategy

Sex education is an integral part of human education and sex education for adolescents is of particular importance as it exerts huge influence over one's life development. In developed communities like the United States and Europe, sex education is not only included in primary education, but also receives social support . Whereas in China, The examination-oriented education system has always put sex education at a disadvantage: no course is dedicated to the topic and sometimes slightly mentioned at best. Sex education for adolescents is not equipped with any nationally approved textbook or national program for studies, nor are there professionally trained teachers or readily applicable models or strategies for execution. On the other hand, imbalanced physical and psychological development makes students in thirst for sex knowledge. The imbalance was and is still not well addressed.High school stage is the critical stage for one's pubertal development. High school students on one hand have the college entrance examination to cope with and are at the critical moment of sexual development, having their sexual psychology and sexual concept formulated on the other. Since the possibility of establishing of a course dedicated to sex education is vey slim at the moment, the education community needs to think of and seek alternatives to conduct high school sex education, which makes the study and practice of execution strategies a necessity.Sex education covers knowledge of sexual physiology, sexual psychology, sexual morality, sex-related laws, sexual ethics and etc. Ways of communicating such knowledge includes cross-disciplinary teaching, ex-curriculum activities, theme campaigns, lectures, consultations, interaction between the school and the parents. Effective and practical strategies, combining different forms of education and teaching together, can help students develop in a healthy and all-around way and meet the guidelines of Shanghai Government on sex education as part of life education.This paper analyzes the results of the questionnaires issued to senior I and senior II students from 20 classes of Shanghai Tianshan Middle School and their parents. The survey reveals that physically, students are experiencing prevalent earlier sexual development; that conceptually, students are too "open minded" ; that students know little about sexual morality and sex-related laws; that parents don't have the right strategy or methods to communicate sex knowledge with their children and that school teachers do have an important role to play. Both students and parents want effective and practical sex education from the school side.Based on the survey, we organized a target force to study theories and practices of conducting sex education in high schools for two years. Experiments are explained and analyzed in this paper.Questionnaires were issued to students from 20 classes and their parents again after the experiments along with interviews. We conclude that against current background, these strategies are practical and effective and are recommendable.Conclusion: strategies like cross-disciplinary education, ex-curriculum activities, and theme campaigns are effective ways to communicate sex knowledge with high school students. Currently as no specific course is dedicated to sex education, the multi-channel strategy which evolves both parents and the school may help to maximize the effect and is a recommendable strategy.