Respected conductor and musical educator Richard Gill brought the rarely tackled topic of arts education to a national audience on Monday night’s Q&A, broadcast on ABC television. He was joined on the popular panel discussion program by celebrity physicist Brian Cox (in Australia for the QSO’s Journey Through the Cosmos performances this week), rapper Matt Colwell aka 360, mathematician Nalini Joshi and actor Miranda Tapsell.

Gill, who is a well-known champion of Australian music as well as a respected educator asserted that Australia is guilty of not valuing teachers, and of letting the curriculum grow stagnant. “I’ve been teaching for 52 years and I’ve seen seven iterations of the curriculum, national and state curriculum, and basically nothing changes” Gill stated. “People just write more words that mean less, and teachers do not have the time to read ridiculous documents.

Describing the unrealistic task ahead of today’s teachers, Gill cited the arts curriculum, a document that is currently 140 pages long. The Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School, Dr John Vallance caused controversy recently when he was reported as saying music and visual arts should have their content diminished. However Gill was keen to set the record straight. “John has been widely misinterpreted, ” Gill insists. “The very first statement in his review is, and I have written it out: ‘As...