The following excerpts have been taken from the California Education Code as it pertains to Humane Education:

• 233.5. - Kindness To Animals
  (a) Each teacher shall endeavor to impress upon the minds of the pupils the principles of morality, truth, justice, patriotism, and a true comprehension of the rights, duties, and dignity of American citizenship, and the meaning of equality and human dignity, including the promotion of harmonious relations, kindness toward domestic pets and the humane treatment of living creatures, to teach them to avoid idleness, profanity, and falsehood, and to instruct them in manners and morals and the principles of a free government.
  
  
• 51540. - Animals & Experiments
  In the public elementary and high schools or in public elementary and high school school sponsored activities and classes held elsewhere than on school premises, live vertebrate animals shall not, as part of a scientific experiment or any purpose whatever:

  (a) Be experimentally medicated or drugged in a manner to cause painful reactions or induce painful or lethal pathological conditions.

  (b) Be injured through any other treatments, including, but not limited to, anesthetization or electric shock. Live animals on the premises of a public elementary or high school shall be housed and cared for in a humane and safe manner.

  The provisions of this section are not intended to prohibit or constrain vocational instruction in the normal practices of animal husbandry.
  
  
• 32255.4. - Animals & Alternatives
  Each teacher teaching a course that utilizes live or dead animals or animal parts shall also inform the pupils of their rights pursuant to this chapter.

  32255.
  As used in this chapter:

  (a) "Animal" means any living organism of the kingdom animalia, beings which typically differ from plants in capacity for spontaneous movement and rapid motor response to stimulation, by a usually greater mobility with some degree of voluntary locomotor ability, by greater irritability commonly mediated through a more or less centralized nervous system, beings which are characterized by a requirement for complex organic nutrients including proteins or their constituents which are usually digested in an internal cavity before assimilation into the body proper, which are distinguished from typical plants by lack of chlorophyll, by an inability to perform photosynthesis, by cells that lack cellulose walls, and by the frequent presence of discrete complex sense organs.

  (b) "Alternative education project" includes, but is not limited to, the use of video tapes, models, films, books, and computers, which would provide an alternate avenue for obtaining the knowledge, information, or experience required by the course of study in question. "Alternative education project" also includes "alternative test."

  (c) "Pupil" means a person under 18 years of age who is matriculated in a course of instruction in an educational institution within the scope of Section 32255.5. For the purpose of asserting the pupil's rights and receiving any notice or response pursuant to this chapter, "pupil" also includes the parents of the matriculated minor.

• 32255.1. - Right To Refuse
  

  (a) Except as otherwise provided in Section 32255.6, any pupil with a moral objection to dissecting or otherwise harming or destroying animals, or any parts thereof, shall notify his or her teacher regarding this objection, upon notification by the school of his or her rights pursuant to Section 32255.4.

  (b) If the pupil chooses to refrain from participation in an education project involving the harmful or destructive use of animals, and if the teacher believes that an adequate alternative education project is possible, then the teacher may work with the pupil to develop and agree upon an alternate education project for the purpose of providing the pupil an alternate avenue for obtaining the knowledge, information, or experience required by the course of study in question.

  (c) The alternative education project shall require a comparable time and effort investment by the pupil. It shall not, as a means of penalizing the pupil be more arduous than the original education project.

  (d) The pupil shall not be discriminated against based upon his or her decision to exercise his or her rights pursuant to this chapter.

  (e) Pupils choosing an alternative educational project shall pass all examinations of the respective course of study in order to receive credit for that course of study. However, if tests require the harmful or destructive use of animals, a pupil may, similarily, seek alternative tests pursuant to this chapter.

  (f) A pupil's objection to participating in an educational project pursuant to this section shall be substantiated by a note from his or her parent or guardian.