The U.S. Census Bureau currently claims that there are roughly 7.3 billion people on this planet, and growing, with a new birth every 8 seconds. With increasing population comes the issue of sustainability, and whether Earth has the capacity to continue providing for the ever growing population. Many ideas have been thrown around to circumvent this issue, including family planning education.
In theory, family planning education could be considered an ideal way to address overpopulation, in that individual families become more aware of their means and determine how many children they can comfortably provide for. The major problem I foresee is how to implement family planning education on a global scale. How do you reach out to every community in every country? Who is running this education program and how is it being paid for?
Probably the best known example of family planning in a single country is China and its controversial one-child policy (now being phased out). Every woman was required to get an IUD after the birth of their child, many times against their wishes. If family planning education is decided as a good strategy to address overpopulation, it's imperative that the family has a choice. Just because there are resources to carry out family planning does not mean that the family has to use them. In many cultures, having a big family is a sign of wealth and success, and family planning education might even be considered an offense to their culture and livelihood.
Overall, family planning education seems like a viable way to deal with overpopulation, but I fear there are too many factors at play to successfully control population through this route alone. Even if we found a way to deal with the factors previously mentioned, who's job is it to implement these education programs and more importantly, how are we determining what "overpopulation" is in the first place? Answering these questions would have to be the first step if there will ever be hopes of addressing overpopulation via family planning education.