The lyrics of “The Wall”

The Wall, by Pink Floyd

The lyrics of “The Wall” are base on the educational problems in society at that time. Education was a big issue throughout the 1970's, time in which the song “The Wall” came out. Education was really different then from now. During those years, teachers could spank their students if they were behaving badly. They “would hurt the children anyway they could by pouring their derision upon anything we did exposing any weakness” as the song says.

Pink Floyds remarks the feeling of the idea of revolution of the students after all the mistreated, black sarcasm and violence, they have received from teachers in the classrooms. He says that there is no point in having that education because “All in all you're just another brick in the wall”. With this phrase he makes a comparison of the bricks in a wall with the students building a “wall” that separates them from the “real world”, don’t letting this students to live their life but the teachers, in a way, they try to transform them into robots for the society.

An important grammatically mistakes appear during the whole song: the line "We don't need no education" is grammatically incorrect. It's a double negative and really means "We need education." This could be a commentary on the quality of the schools, criticizing their education and mocking them.

Lastly, teachers during the song appear as a powerful and feared figure. But Pink Floyd demonstrates that they are as dominant as they are because out of the school, they are no one, with no power.

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