Pink Floyd - We Don't Need No Education

First, if you remember the second time they sing through the verse, it's just a bunch of kids singing it; "we don't need no" is absolutely something a school age working class kid with a Cockney accent in England in the 70s might say instead of "we need no" or "we don't need".

Pink Floyd - We Don't Need No Education

Second, either potential meaning of the double negative doesn't really make sense for the second line. "We need thoughts control"? "We don't need this type of thoughts control"? Neither of those make sense, at least to me. And if the second line is not a double negative, then why would the first one be? Furthermore, do children need "dark sarcasm in the classroom"? I don't think so either.

Third, the whole song is a rebellion against the school, and when "Another Brick In the Wall" plays in The Wall film, Pink has a day dream of the children chanting "we don't need no education", destroying the school building with sledgehammers and crowbars, setting it on fire, and dragging the teachers out kicking and screaming. To me, this doesn't say "we need education" or "we need a different type of education", it says "we don't need education at all". I don't know if the call for alternative education is even something a kid of that age would think of; school is the way that it is and Pink hates it.

'We dont need no...' is commonly used in London for 'we don't need any'. its simple. Note that the lyric is not 'we don't need no learning'. The point is that an inner city London school in the 70s was often not about learning but about 'schooling'

Maybe it's just omitted punctuation in the lyrics readable form (we don't need, no, education / we don't need -no!- thought control), as emphasazing the negative statement. That also makes sense rhythmically

Anyone who's lived in London where they speak Cockney, as in this song, knows very well that "we don't need no" means we don't need any. I grew up there, so seeing all these questions and analysis is actually quite funny. No Londoner would ever ask this question.

The song's famous anti-authority chorus -- "We don't need no education/ We don't need no thought control" -- was actually recorded without the permission of the headmistress of the school. After being approached by Pink Floyd's management, music teacher Alun Renshaw led his pupils, aged 13 to 16, to Britannia Row, a nearby recording studio, where the band was recording the song for its album, The Wall.

Life imitated art in early 1980 when South African school children, fed up with an inferior apartheid-era education system, took to chanting the lyrics of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)." The song, with a memorable line stating "We don't need no education," had held the top spot on the local charts for almost three months, a total of seven weeks longer than it did in America.

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"When the school children are all chanting 'We don't need no education' together in unison, this act, in a way, is MORE conforming than the education they have grown to hate. If you think about it, Roger Waters was saying that even in a revolt against conformity there will still be the presence of conformists, or uniformed followers. The use of the helpless school children is magnificent and proves my point even more. These kids do what they are told! I mean, I read somewhere that Roger got the idea to use a group of kids one day and then BANG, the next day he asked a school if he could come in and BANG, they all agreed and within a short period of time, the entire chorus of children was recorded. No questions asked. Nobody raised a fuss or anything, even the teachers in the school were excited and caught up in the moment without fully understanding what was going on. My point is this: Roger Waters wanted to show how conformity is ever-present, even when we're little, and even when we are rebelling. His point is definitely powerful." - Brad Kaye

Then Cuomo, flanked by wife Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy Jr., leaped on the stage like a Dalmatian on steroids, and lectured, loudly and obviously, about the need for better education for the poor. 041b061a72