Harry Styles, Guy Ritchie, Nick Mason, Paul Weller

From writer Abdul-Rehman Malik:

Chris, I’d never thought I’d become a teacher. It wasn’t that I didn’t like teachers or appreciate the very hard work they do. I know precisely where my fear of teaching came from and I can squarely lay the blame at the feet of Nick and his bandmates.

I saw the video for Pink Floyd’s masterpiece “Another Brick in the Wall” when I was way too young. The image of kids on a conveyer belt heading towards that menacing grinder never left me. I still shudder a bit when I think about it. Its staying power is what makes it great art.

The song made me think differently about education. Eventually, I sort of measured all my schooling against it. Was I being straightjacketed by a slavish adherence to curriculum? Did the teachers care about what I thought?

I’d had some pretty great teachers through school, but my shenanigans did push some of their buttons. An 8th grade teacher of mine declared I was an “insubordinate, pig headed child” when I wouldn’t relent in an argument over the application of some antiquated school policy. I hope Pink Floyd would have been proud.

So when I finally decided to apply to a teaching program, I hesitated. My motivation was to be the opposite of what the song described, but what if I wasn’t able to live up to my ideals and ended up treating my kids like they were another brick in the wall?

“You read and write heaps of books; in fact, sacred books are piled up all around you,” observed the Punjabi Sufi mystic Baba Bulleh Shah. “You’re surrounded by all this light, yet you carry darkness within you. The real trouble is you’ve never bothered to know yourself at all.”

Education is supposed to unleash our potential to be creative, to do good, to be great. I hope during the years I taught high school, I was able nudge my students towards a better version of themselves. 

Nowadays, I only have my six year-old son’s increasingly sophisticated arguments to contend with. I want to scream that he’s being “insubordinate”. But I stop myself, and smile inside. Thank God, he’s turning out just fine.