Pink Floyd-The Wall

We, in Argentina, often rely on education to solve most of our social problems. We blame education, or the lack of it, for many of them. Consider the huge success (described in the text below) of the song “Another brick in the wall” which claims “we don’t need no education” and compare it to what you think about education.

.In my point of view, Argentina needs to educate people in a correct way. This is reflected in the high amount of adults receiving a social economic plan without working because of their lack of education. So I think that education is fundamental in the type of society we live.

Explain the title of the song “The happiest days of our lives” considering the lyrics and the movie scene.

When we grew up and went to school

There were certain teachers who would

Hurt the children in any way they could

By pouring their derision upon anything we did

And exposing every weakness

However carefully hidden by the kids

But in the town, it was well known

When they got home at night, their fat and

Psychopathic wives would thrash them

Within inches of their lives

It's a cycle of cruelty and oppression. The teachers are abused by their husbands, so they take it out on the kids, where it, in turn, eats away at them. The title is extremely sarcastic. While your childhood and school days are often said to be the happiest days of your life, they obviously weren't for Roger Waters. Considering the school system in England, especially at that time, that's no surprise.

Argumentative essay about the song "Another brick in the wall"

This essay is about Pink Floyd’s most successful song, “Another brick in the wall”. The aim of this essay is argue that the song is resistant as it demonstrates how the education system is turning out children that are conformist and how the Band rejected that system.

To start with, Roger Waters wrote the lyrics of this song. When he was five months old, his father was killed in World War II which had a profound effect on his life. His mother, a teacher, moved the family to Cambridge, where he met the other members of the band while studying architecture in London, after various changes, these five members would eventually become the band, Pink Floyd. Waters attended the Cambridge High School for Boys which has an outstanding academic level. Roger’s opinion of this school is: ‘the regime at school was a very oppressive one’ and that ‘kids who are susceptible to bullying by other kids are also susceptible to bullying by the teachers’; ‘There were some who were just incredible bad and treated the children so badly, putting them down all the time, never encouraging them to do things, just trying to keep them quiet and still and crush them into the right shape so that they could go to university and ‘do well’.

Waters left the band in 1985 because he believed Pink Floyd, the band, had run its course. After a legal dispute he lost the legal right to retain the band name but held on to the rights of ‘The Wall’. In 1990 he held a concert for charity at the Berlin Wall, called ‘The Wall, Live in Berlin’, this was a fitting tribute to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism in late 1989.

In order to lyrics, the first two lines contain double negatives, ‘don’t need no’ which should mean the opposite. However in this case I believe, he is reinforcing his message, which is that the education he received was not fit for purpose and that education should allow for a greater freedom of expression. He criticizes the teachers for their ‘dark sarcasm’ meaning that they are guilty of mocking the children in an evil way and he pleads to the teachers to ‘leave the kids alone’, which means that the children are mentally and physically abused. The last line of the verse states that ‘you’re just another brick in the wall’, by this he indicates that we are all part of a system, where bullying is endemic in society.

To conclude, this essay proves that this song is resistant as they challenge the system of education that is promoted mainly by fee paying schools, which is to make students conform to a specific model, in order to get into university.