Pink Floyd‘s second best-selling album “The Wall” was written entirely by Roger Waters, who was the band’s co-founder, bassist and main songwriter. It sold an estimated amount of more than 30 million copies worldwide and there were many incredible songs. One of them was “Another Brick in The Wall”, which had three parts and really became an anthem for kids who hated school and their teachers.
“We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave them kids alone,” the lyrics say. Everyone from all ages had bad experiences in school with teachers. So it’s really a song the entire world can relate to and connect with something they have experienced. But there was “a certain” teacher who inspired Roger Waters to write the song?
There was a teacher who inspired “Another Brick in The Wall”?
Well, there was not a specific teacher “who would hurt the children in any way” he could. It was actually inspired by many bad experiences Waters had when he went to school in Cambridge, England.
He recalled that in an interview with Karl Dallas in 1982, saying he enjoyed his primary school a lot but hated the grammar school.
“(There was not a specific teacher) Not one specific one, but we had a number. We had some good teachers as well. But we had a fair number who were serving their time and who were extremely bitter about all sorts of different things. Who as I say were so frustrated and bitter about their lives that they treated the kids at school abominably.”
He continued:
“They would often pick on the weak ones as well and make their lives a misery for them. It was a war, it was a real war with lots of them, a real battle. Sometimes the battle was won by the kids and I can remember teachers at my grammar school having nervous breakdowns,” Roger Waters said.
“Another Brick in The Wall (Pt. 2)” was one of the singles from “The Wall“. At the time, the track peaked at number 1 in several countries, including the United States and United Kingdom.
During the same conversation he said he remembered that one day one of his teachers just got on a train one afternoon and nobody knew. He was found wandering miles away many hours later. The musician also said that the kids used to follow the example of the teachers and pick on the weak kids.
“Because of the way we felt and the fact that we felt it was a battle. In fact, we behaved in the same way. We followed their example. The nasty sarcastic ones that picked on the weak kids, that affected us to the extent that we picked on the weak teachers,” Roger Waters said.
Curiously, his father, who died in battle during the Second World War II, was a school teacher. He was killed in Italy when Waters was only five months old. So the artist was raised by his mom Mary Waters, who was also a school teacher in Cambridge.