Louise Slaughter: “Let me talk about something for a minute that I don't believe has been discussed today, and that is the effect on our…”

“Let me talk about something for a minute that I don't believe has been discussed today, and that is the effect on our school children of art. We know for a fact that every school child in secondary school that has art for 4 years goes up 57 points on their verbal SATs, and we know it is attributable to art. We know that the days that art is in the schools that there is no absenteeism. We know that children that learn to create don't destroy. We know that in developing minds, the effect that art and dance and movement have on that. As a matter of fact, I think the University of California Davis has done extensive study showing the correlation between studying a keyboard and computers, between studying modern dance and math. We have all seen it over and over again. And we worry all the time about, one, how are we going to keep our children in school and, second, how are we going to make better students of them? This is cheap at the price, Mr. Chairman.”