National Arts in Education Week 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. BONAMICI. Madam Speaker, ``Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.''

Madam Speaker, like many of you, I grew up singing that song. We sang it at camp, on holidays, and in school. It has no genre. It has been performed by country, soul, gospel, and Latin rock artists like Carlos Santana, Pat Boone, Johnny Mathis, Gladys Knight, Nat King Cole, and Mahalia Jackson.

Here is its history. It was written back in the 1950s for a group of teenagers from different religions and racial and economic backgrounds. They were brought together in California at a workshop designed to create friendship and understanding through education.

The teens said that singing helped them to create a climate where they would have world peace and understanding.

I have been thinking about that a lot this past week, especially in the context of education. This is National Arts in Education Week. It is a time to celebrate and recognize the importance of arts education.

Maybe you wonder why, Madam Speaker.

There are many reasons, and here are three:

Students do better in school when they have arts education.

Arts education inspires creativity, which is important for economic growth and innovation.

Importantly, the arts help heal, and students and our Nation need healing.

First, scores of studies over several years show that students do better in all subjects when they have arts education. Unfortunately, arts education is often seen as an extra, or it is cut because it is not included in the national test scores, but that is very shortsighted.

Arts education has a remarkable and positive effect on students' academic, social, and emotional outcomes, including higher test scores, more compassion for others, and fewer disciplinary problems. It also keeps students interested in school, improves attendance, and increases graduation rates.

Arts education benefits every student, even in preschool. A recent study shows that students in an arts-integrated preschool show three times the growth in vocabulary compared with a similar program without the arts. That is something to celebrate.

Second, arts education will prepare students for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Many people talk about the four Cs of job skills for the 21st century: collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking. I will add a fifth: confidence.

I visited Quatama Elementary School, an arts-integrated STEAM school in my home State of Oregon, where two sixth-grade students explained how they made a stop-motion animation film about cell division. Now, that was very impressive, and they were very confident. With more technology and artificial intelligence, students will need skills to observe, analyze, question, and consider multiple perspectives. It is not just answering questions, it is knowing what questions to ask. These skills are all enhanced with arts education.

There are millions of jobs in arts and culture sectors across the country. Madam Speaker, when you listen to music or watch a TV show or a movie or play a video game, those are all created by artists. However, collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, and confidence help in any career and in life.

Finally, the arts heal, and we need that now. The brain research is there; the arts improve health and well-being.

A few years ago I met two students at Aloha High School in Oregon. They were in a music class. They were high school students, and I asked them what they liked about the class. They told me they had both lost family members during COVID, so they wrote a song about it. They said that when they sang, it made them feel better.

In fact, the former Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, said that music is medicine, and research continues to show the healing power of the arts.

The VA runs a successful arts therapy program for veterans with PTSD. World-renowned soprano, Renee Fleming, recently released ``Music and Mind'', a new book about harnessing the arts for health and wellness. It is full of examples, stories, and research.

For today's children and young adults who will be tomorrow's leaders, I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the bipartisan Arts Education for All bill. For those keeping track, it is H.R. 2485, and to fully fund the Every Student Succeeds Act, especially title I and title IV-A.

This is so students do better in school and become creative, critical thinkers. It is so our economy can thrive because the next generation will know how to collaborate, communicate, and come up with new ideas and new ways to solve problems. It is also so young people and people of every generation can learn more about each other's ideas and culture, and we can work on healing.

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