The other answers are correct, the meaning is "we don't need any education". Normally a sentence like this is considered incorrect grammar, but for informal use, English grammar rules are often broken. When a native speaker hears this kind of double negative, we may think the speaker is less educated, or from a lower social class. But, like in the Pink Floyd song, it can be a choice that makes the speaker sound more defiant or rebellious.

It is a double negative. The double negative as an expression of a strong negative is common in many non-standard versions of English. Pink Floyd was a band made up of highly educated Englishmen, who knew exactly what they were doing: breaking standard grammar rules in a way common in English working class dialects in order to issue a rallying cry for protest against a ruling elite and against the way stifling, repetitive and inadequate education was (seemed to them and others to be) sometimes forced on unwilling pupils, who needed and might have responded better to a wholly different approach to education. In the official video for the song. an old-style English schoolteacher finds a boy with a notebook with some poetry in it. He reads the poetry aloud to the class. mocking the boy. The poems are fragments from other Pink Floyd songs. Then the song "Another Brick in the Wall" starts up. It is an anthem in favour of individual self-expression and creativity. Other songs you may know often feature another very familiar double negative used as a strong negative "Ain't got no ..." There is a whole Nina Simone song buit around this usage (Ain't Got No - I Got Life), and it appears in very many other lyrics. No native speaker. I'd imagine, is unaware of the intended meaning, and very very few will be unaware that this is breaking "standard grammar" rules. It may amuse you to learn, if you do not already know, that is a trope about creative writing classes in English that they start with some sentiment along the lines of "You're not writing for your English teacher now. You are writing for us all. Use language we all understand, in ways that we find familiar, in ways that add power, beauty, shock or extra layers of meaning of whatever you are trying to say. This is no place for the grammar handbook."

hi! Lyrics from Pink Floyd "Another brick in the wall, pt2". Why is that not a double negative? *** Because songs are written creatively and it doesn't follow the formal way of writing or any grammatical structures, just like poems. It falls under the category of "creative writing" (not "formal writing"), it follows the emotions, mood, thoughts simultaneously and spontaneously, etc and written in a poetic way/informal/improper way even and it is subject to interpretation. ...but to check the lyrics// To translate it, simply: We don't need "no education" [We don't need a community "without education"] or [A community without education is the least we need] Have a great day!

I love Pink Floyd and I sometimes wonder if the double negative in this song is meant to be taken literally? "we DON'T need NO education = we NEED education?" Everyone else's answers are good of course, but I wonder if they were being intentionally sarcastic or coy in their lyrics or are the characters in the song actually using the double negative because they are indeed UNeducated and, in fact, DO need education? They even reference "dark sarcasm in the classroom" - Floyd lyrics are fantastic and a good study in artistic expression and style, but should DEFINITELY not be used as a good example of straightforward language learning and instruction. It would be far better to be used as a form of literary and cultural analysis.

what's the meaning of "we don't need no education?" It's just an idiomatic or very informal way of saying "We don't need any education" Using 'no' this informal way stresses more that no education is needed.