The vast majority of America’s problems with sex are based on the lack of a single social system: a way for boys and girls to have extended association with each other in a chaperoned, safe manner, *without* distractions. This has to happen for long periods at frequent intervals over the course of many years.
Most people assume that such interaction happens either in school or in church, but the truth is that in either case, children are kept too busy to interact.
People who raise dogs know that if a dog is isolated from other dogs, it will begin to see other dogs as “the enemy”, not part of their human-dog family. At maturity, dogs will still want to mate, but it is much harder, because they are conflicted between mating and fighting. There may be sex, but no friendly relationship between animals.
Why should children be markedly different from dogs?
Perhaps a good approach would be treating it like a social “finishing school”, which is more like practicing politeness instead of an intellectual exercise of learning about it.
Everything about it is “boy-girl-boy-girl”, to break up the natural desire to segregate by gender. While on the surface it is all about etiquette and manners, in reality it is to accomplish extended polite interaction between boys and girls, so that they learn how to do so. And importantly, it is chaperoned, so that there are adult men and women there to act as guides and prevent rudeness and misbehavior.
While they are taught things, the emphasis is on practicing what they have been taught with each other. Table manners, polite conversation, courtesies, body language, the list goes on and on.
The end result is hoped to be that when they are adults, they will be able to politely interact with each other, have a greater understanding of the other gender, to act on better principles than impulse, and to take more than their own point of view into account.
Was it better in the 1950s?