This, That, and the Other

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams once again handed over the reins to Paula Light of Light Motifs II. Paula’s theme choices are School, College, Education, Class, and Degree. I was going to go with the Hall & Oates song, “Adult Education,” but our host, Jim, beat me to it.” So instead it’s Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2.”

“Another Brick in the Wall” is a three-part composition on Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera, The Wall. It was written by the band’s bassist Roger Waters. “Part 2” was released as a single in late 1979 and it sold over four million copies worldwide.

The song is essentially a protest song against rigid and abusive schooling, and it features a children’s choir. Waters wrote the song about his views on formal education, which were framed during his time at the Cambridgeshire School for Boys. He hated his grammar school teachers and felt they were more interested in keeping the kids quiet than teaching them.

In the film based on the album, in the film based on the album, the “Part 2” sequence shows children entering a school and marching in unison through a meat grinder, becoming “putty-faced” clones, before rioting and burning down the school.

Walters later claimed that the song was intending to be satirical. He said, “You couldn’t find anybody in the world more pro-education than me. But the education I went through in boys’ grammar school in the ’50s was very controlling and demanded rebellion. The teachers were weak and therefore easy targets. The song is meant to be a rebellion against errant government, against people who have power over you, who are wrong. Then it absolutely demanded that you rebel against that.”

The children’s chorus that sang on this track came from a school in Islington, England, and was chosen because it was close to the studio. It was made up of 23 kids between the ages of 13 and 15. They were overdubbed 12 times, making it sound like there were many more kids.

Here are the song’s lyrics.

We don’t need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave those kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave those kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

‘Wrong, Do it again!’
‘If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?’
‘You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!’