The Legislature further finds and declares as follows:
(a)
Through their curricula, our public schools traditionally provide our children with an understanding and appreciation of personal values, and a sense of human community.
(b)
It is the responsibility of our public educational system, in conjunction with parents, to intellectually and emotionally prepare our students to understand and cope with reality, including the facts of life in the nuclear age, the threat of nuclear war and annihilation, and the dangers of radiation.
(c)
Our public schools provide an appropriate forum for discussion of the personal, environmental, social, political, and military aspects of life in the nuclear age. These discussions make a valuable contribution to students’ development into informed, self-assured, responsible, decisionmaking adults.
(d)
It is also the responsibility of our public educational system to provide students with an understanding of the causes of conflict among nations and the options for conflict resolution and the attainment of peace.
(e)
Many parents, acting out of concern for their children’s current and future welfare, are already seeking formal and informal assistance in providing their children with the tools for coping with life in the nuclear age.
(f)
Organizations in many states, including California, are already collecting information on nuclear age education curricula designed to meet the needs of students for accurate information on international relations, nuclear war, the causes of war, and available options, including conflict resolution, in the nuclear age, as well as beneficial peacetime uses of nuclear power.
(g)
The State Department of Education is best suited to the task of collecting information from various research and educational groups across the country, to make objective assessments of the value of specific components of a curriculum, and to develop a model nuclear age education curriculum.