We Don’t Need No Education—Tony Danza, Pink Floyd and “Another Brick in the Wall”



Photo: Wikimedia

 So, how do you get from Tony Danza to Pink Floyd?

Simple. Tony Danza spent a year teaching in an urban Philadelphia school and wrote a book about his experience called I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.
His experience was also featured in an A&E reality show. I caught a few episodes of it. People may have liked him in Taxi and Who’s the Boss? but his students were mostly unimpressed.
Isn’t that just the way? You can have awesome hair in the eighties, but 30 years later the teens just yawn in your face.

So I started thinking about song about education, and of course the first one that came to mind was Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” You can download the live version on Freegal.
I remember it caused a bit of a stir because of the lyrics, and my Sunday School teacher didn’t like it one bit. You could try to explain, “It’s actually a song that protests against the dehumanizing effects of rigid boarding schools,”  but all they could hear was that first line, and it was the devil’s song.