Tonight’s song is about school. Not a good school: a cruel one, where teachers mock children and try to make them all the same, like bricks in a wall.
Learn from Songs · Unit 12: Review · B1–B2
Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)
Pink Floyd’s famous protest against cruel schooling, with a children’s choir: double negatives and non-standard English in songs (we don’t need no…), how to say it in standard English, imperatives, and used to for school memories, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
SOPHIA
MARCOS
Finally a song for me!
SOPHIA
Careful, Marcos. The song attacks bad teaching, not learning. And its grammar is famously bad: that’s on purpose. We’ll learn how to say it correctly.
DEMETRIA
A song with bad grammar, in a grammar lesson? Wonderful.
Before you listen: the song
London, 1979
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd hated his secondary school in Cambridge in the 1950s, where some teachers, he said, cared more about discipline than about children. In 1979 he wrote The Wall, a double album about a man who builds a wall around himself, brick by brick. Each bad experience is “another brick in the wall”.
For Part 2, the producer Bob Ezrin recorded a choir of pupils from Islington Green School, near the studio in London. The song became the Christmas number one in Britain in 1979 and number one in America in 1980. In South Africa it was banned in 1980 after Black students used it to protest against their unequal schools.
In the song, the children sing that they don’t need that kind of education or that kind of control. They tell the teacher to leave them alone. At the end, a voice shouts at a pupil, like a cruel teacher.
Teaching should build people up, not wall them in.
Listen: the choir
PHILO
Listen once. Who sings the second verse? What do they want the teacher to do?
SOPHIA
Then answer Section A. Listen for the voice at the end.
🧱 Listen to the song: “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” (Roger Waters, 1979), by Pink Floyd.Find the recording →
📜 Read the words while you listen: “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, Pink Floyd.Read the lyrics →
Double negatives
MARCOS
In the song: We don’t need no education. In standard English: We don’t need any education. / We need no education.
SOPHIA
Standard English uses one negative: not + any, or no with a positive verb. Songs, dialects and jokes use double negatives for emphasis. Remember it from Unit 9a? The children sing it this way because it sounds rebellious.
Non-standard grammar: them kids
DEMETRIA
In the song: Leave them kids alone. In standard English: Leave those children alone.
SOPHIA
them as a determiner (them kids) is common in some spoken dialects. Standard: those + noun. kids is fine in informal English.
Imperatives and used to
PHILO
Leave them alone! Don’t mock them! Our teacher used to shout at us. We didn’t use to enjoy school.
SOPHIA
Imperatives for orders: infinitive / Don’t + infinitive. For past habits and memories: used to + infinitive; negative didn’t use to; question Did you use to…?
Sophia’s comparison: Plato on learning
SOPHIA
Plato wrote that a free person should never learn anything like a slave. Knowledge forced on the mind doesn’t stay there. So, he said, let children’s lessons be a kind of play; then you will also see what each one is good at.
PHILO
And the Proverbs say: train up a child in the way he should go. The way he should go, say the rabbis: each child according to his own nature.
MARCOS
I knew Plato would be on my side.
Sophia’s summary
| Words and forms | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| not + any / no + positive verb | standard negatives | We don’t need any… / We need no… |
| double negatives | songs, dialects, emphasis | We don’t need no… |
| those + noun | standard (not them kids) | Leave those children alone. |
| infinitive / Don’t + infinitive | imperatives | Leave them alone! |
| used to / didn’t use to | past habits | Our teacher used to shout. |
Practice
Listen to the song for Section A, then do the rest. Press “Check my answers” at the end. You can try again as many times as you like.
A · Listen: the song
Listen to the song and choose the best answer.
1. What is the song about?
2. Who sings the second verse?
3. What do they want the teacher to do?
4. What does “another brick in the wall” mean?
5. Where was it number one at Christmas 1979?
6. Why was it banned in South Africa?
B · Grammar and vocabulary
Write the missing word or words.
7. We don’t need education. (standard English)
8. We need education. (standard, one negative)
9. Leave children alone. (standard)
10. mock them! (negative imperative)
11. Our teacher to shout at us.
12. We didn’t to enjoy school.
C · Right or wrong?
Is the sentence correct English?
13. “I don’t need nothing.” (in an exam)
14. “Leave those children alone.”
15. “We didn’t used to like it.”
16. “Did you use to walk to school?”
Talk and write
Discussion and writing
Fix the song. In pairs, rewrite the famous lines of the chorus in perfect standard English. Is it still a good song? Why do singers break grammar rules?
Discuss. 1. What makes a good teacher? 2. What did you use to like or dislike about school? 3. Plato says learning should be like play. Do you agree?
Write (120–150 words). The best teacher I ever had (or the worst, without names). Use used to, didn’t use to, imperatives the teacher used, and correct negatives.
Now play the gamebook: a cruel schoolmaster, and a better way to teach.Play the gamebook →