These words by Roger Waters were sung by pupils from Islington Green School on the recording of Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), the rock band Pink Floyd's biggest hit single. The record reached Number 1 in the British music charts on 15 December 1979, and stayed there for five weeks, the much-desired Christmas Number 1. It was put there by young people, many of them still at school, who one presumes were responding to the words at least as much as to the music. Along with its popularity, the song aroused intense hostility, not only from the tabloid press who launched a venomous attack on the head teacher of the school, but also from luminaries like Clive James in The Observer.

In this chapter I will try to draw together some of the themes raised by the contributors to this book, in order to ask some questions about child–adult relationships, about participation and autonomy, about language and communication, and about politics and citizenship. But I want to start by asking about the ‘oppositional talk’ exemplified in the above quotation.

Why did that song – those words – provoke such strong feelings, for and against? Perhaps it has something to do with the power of that ‘We don't need no…’; whether we think what is meant is education as such or a particular kind of education, perhaps one done to children rather than with them. A strong negative can be positive, especially for a group that experiences itself as being oppressed or ‘done down’. Indeed, in 1980 the same song was adopted as a protest anthem by black students in South Africa, and was subsequently banned by the apartheid government. Hearing what children have to say is not always comfortable. They don't always say what adults want to hear; but that is surely part of the point of listening to them. It is easy to talk about ‘listening to children’ as if it were a straightforward process, simple and good.