Daniel Im

IB Lang 11

Moosman 3

Tim Leunig’s TED Talk Notes

Leunig starts off by introducing himself about himself and how he is an economics

teacher and how education is vital to fuel creativity, arguing that education is what fuels the

prosper of human creativity. He starts off by giving examples during the Industrial revolution in

the 19th century in Britain. One of the major examples is steam power, which was one of the

greatest creations of economic history. Leunig talks about how the creator, Thomas Newcomen,

was able to take his knowledge of water because of him being a miner and understanding that

flooding is a problem for these miners. He took his knowledge and created a vacuum to be able

to suck up all this water and pull it out of the mines. Then there was Pappan who was the creator

of the cylinder and piston and with the knowledge of these two, humans were able to create the

steam engine which revolutionized how humans would do things. Leunig continues talking about

Ken Robinons and how in his speech, he talks about how schools are responsible for killing the

creativity of children and people. Leunig then goes to another example of how education is the

base of human creativity. Children die from the infection of cutting the umbilical cord and

Pauline Williams was able to understand that there is an ingredient within mouthwash, because

she worked at a mouthwash company, and was able to make that ingredient into an easy-to-use

gel that would hopely save thousands of lives every year. Leunig then continues to talk about a

former student, named Sophia Solomon, who is a musician who has very good literature

knowledge of music and russian so she is able to study and make music in a more better way.

Because of this, he argues that literacy is the foundation of education. It's very important because
with literacy knowledge, it allows people to learn off of other people's knowledge and with that

knowledge, be able to understand and expand off them to grow creativity. This is important for

an active democracy. He then starts the end of his speech talking about how the people who

educate are very important and starts to give thanks to all of them. Teachers, parents, and any

general educator that help fuel and feed knowledge to these children and that they deserve the

round of applause that is given to him.