My Favorite TED Talk: Richard Gill - The Value of Music Education
TED Talks are awesome. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and TED Talks have been around since 1984. When they first started showing up online in the mid 2000’s, I was absolutely blown away by not only the fascinating topics that were covered by some of the world’s best presenters, I was also blown away by how polished these short, 10 to 20-minute presentations were. As someone who presents sessions and keynotes on a regular basis and obsesses over every detail of my slide deck, I know just how much these talks have been rehearsed, edited and practiced. The most popular TED Talk of all time is the one given by the late Sir Ken Robinson titled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” While I LOVE his talk, my all-time favorite TED Talk ever given was by the late Richard Gill, a well-known and award winning music educator and conductor from Sydney, Australia. It was actually at a spin-off TEDx event, a local independently organized event that follows the same format of the original TED.
His talk, given in May of 2011, is all about giving students (and all people) the opportunity to create their own music. In my opinion, it is the single most effective advocacy tool for why music education is such a vital aspect of our education system. I strongly urge you to take 13 minutes out of your day and remind yourselves WHY you got into this profession in the first place. As soon as you’re finished watching, send it to your administrators, your colleagues, your students and their parents.
A year after he gave his original talk, Richard followed it up at a TEDx Event in Sydney, on the essential role of music in education. While this talk is nowhere near as well known as his original one, it is just as powerful in my opinion. Here it is:
While it’s a little sad that we, as music educators, constantly feel the need to justify why our subject should be taught in schools and why our programs should be EXPANDED rather than cut, people like Richard Gill, who sadly passed away in 2018, provide a strong reminder of why it is such an important and vital subject - one that is with us every day of our lives both during and after our school years. Thank you Richard for reminding us of the WHY. Every music educator I know needs this reminder from time to time.
