My English Class Blog: September 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGVNE8nNzPY

LYRICS

"Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)"

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, 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

[Chorus by pupils from the Fourth Form Music Class Islington Green School, London]

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, teacher, leave us kids alone

All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall

[Spoken:]
Wrong! Do it again!
Wrong! Do it again!
If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding!
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!
You! Yes, you, behind the bike sheds, stand still, laddy!

SONGFACTS
Roger Waters wrote this 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. The wall refers to the wall Waters built around himself because he wasn't in touch with reality. The bricks in the wall were the events in his life which propelled him to build this proverbial wall around him, and his school teacher was another brick in the wall.
Waters told Mojo, December 2009, that the song is meant to be satirical. He explained: "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 chorus 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.

The addition of the choir convinced Waters that the song would come together. He told Rolling Stone: "It suddenly made it sort of great."
Pink Floyd's producer, Bob Ezrin, had the idea for the chorus. He used a choir of kids when he produced Alice Cooper's "School's Out" in 1972. Ezrin liked to use children's voices on songs about school.
The disco beat was suggested by their producer, Bob Ezrin, who was a fan of the group Chic. This was completely unexpected from Pink Floyd, who specialized in making records you were supposed to listen to, not dance to. He got the idea for the beat when he was in New York and heard something Nile Rodgers was doing.
Pink Floyd rarely released singles that were also on an album. They felt their songs were best appreciated in the context of an album, where the songs and the artwork came together to form a theme. Producer Bob Ezrin convinced them that this could stand on it's own and would not hurt album sales, and when the band relented and released it as a single, it became their only #1 hit. Two more songs were subsequently released as singles from the album: "Run Like Hell" and "Comfortably Numb."
The concept of the album was to explore the "walls" people put up to protect themselves. Any time something bad happens, we withdraw further, putting up "another brick in the wall."

EXPLANATIONS

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 the kids alone!

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Monavis

Education teaches conformity. Everything HAS to be a set way, as free thought posses a danger, as those who are capable of free thought will NOT do what they are told to do without question. Questioning of the system is the inherit danger TO the system. So for 12 years or so, you are programmed to do exactly that, in training to become the perfect corporate drone. Where as a child, you believe that ANYTHING is possible, and it is. It takes a life of adults telling you that it isn't. So without education of this matter, where it tries to force everyone into the same square peg mold, whereas if you are a round peg, you get left behind, what would be possible, where could we go?

Psychological manipulation and how it ties in to the book 1984 and the due process of how to government takes over everything in everyone's minds.

Interpol

The phrase is ambiguous. Are you another brick in the wall? There is a difference between free will and driven "free" will. Are we truly free, successful, rich? Or there is always an impenetrable "glass ceiling"? We could be ignorant slaves fooled by little chunks of glass we see as gems. When we enter the office, the tube, the post, when we buy the daily newspaper, our canned food, the latest, expensive fashion item, when we rent an apartment/house/whatever identical to the next-door one, when we watch the same TV show as lots of others (god, you didn't make it, I didn't make it, someone else made the show and approved it to be seen by us), when we work and try and sweat and fight and compete and bleed for that position, and we realize the position is controlled by other major or minor, inside or (even more) outside variables, think again; think clear! Are you really you? Are you really free?.
"All in all you are just another brick in the wall."

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They are trying to take away individuality by saying that someone could easily be replaced. Although without the one small brick in one large wall, it would be weaker or fall apart.

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When it comes down to it you're just another reason to build our walls of isolation higher and stronger. You're just another thing wrong in life, just another dumb thing to try to ignore.

I think you'll find, based on interviews with the band, this was more the message that they were going for when writing the song.

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blcartwright

I just read "The Catcher In The Rye" and thought of this song reading Holden Caulfield's description of his life, as the son of a rich man attending a private boarding school.

He saw the school as part of the societal structure that he thought was a farce, stripping free well, so that the students were in training to fulfill their predestined roles. He thought everyone were "phonies" because they didn't act themselves, instead they did and said what they thought was expected of them, in order to present the correct image.

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This is the cruel snarkiness, mocking and sarcasm of teachers, students and society. The classroom being either a metaphor for life or simply the classroom.

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Bob

Well, as a double negative "we don't need NO education", really sates we need education. Ever think of that? No, I haven't it's just dark sarcasm.

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Pinkerton

Previous explanations are wrong. This song was created according to the movie The Wall, written by Roger Waters (Pink Floyd).
In this specific phrase, the song talks about the metaphoric wall the main character built up around him to isolate him from his own feelings. While remembering his childhood days on an oppressive classroom, this feelings become just another brick in the wall to protect him from society.

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Basically gets at how they teach everyone the same thing "All in all you're just another brick in the wall" is like because we are all taught to behave a certain way we are all the same with no personality of any sort and such just as what the government does for the citizens in 1984.

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Pinkerton

Yet another reference to "The Wall" movie (because this song was made for it, obviously).
This can refer to the part where the children, who are part of an oppresive school system, are thrown into a meat grinder. The movie itself is surrealistic and violent, the words "meat" and "pudding" can come along with one another according to this fictional situation at the movie.

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PUDDINGBEFOREMEAT

People tend to eat meat (or dinner) before they eat pudding (dessert). Unless it's rice pudding, I guess. Either way, it's generally considered odd to eat dessert before you eat dinner, as the act of doing so is so rarely practiced.

Then again, this was all very obvious anyway so I don't know why I tried explaining it.