“If the Prime Minister decides to sing for the people of Sweden I wish he would least choose to sing lyrics that did not proclaim our lack of a need for education,” Metta Fjelkner of the Swedish Teachers Federation says in a foolish statement that makes me question Swedish schoolteachers’ knowledge of culture.

What did the Prime Minister sing that upset the teachers so? The answer is, parts of these lyrics from Pink Floyd’s The Wall:

When we grew up and went to school there were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could

By pouring their derision upon anything we did
And exposing any 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!

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thoughts controlled
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave the kids alone
Hey, teachers, leave the kids alone!

All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall

Read the lyrics carefully—or better still, listen to it and watch the video. Are they really about proclaiming a “lack of a need for education”? I don’t think so. They are about child abuse dressed as education.

I wonder what Swedish teachers would make of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Perhaps a glorification of promiscuity and a tribute to carelessness?