"Another Brick in the Wall" is a three-part composition on Pink Floyd's 1979 album, The Wall, written by bassist Roger Waters.  "Part II", is a protest song against rigid schooling, features a children's choir and at the suggestion of the producer and they added elements of disco also.

Waters wrote this song about his views on formal education, which were framed during his time at the Cambridgeshire School for Boys.  He hated his grammar schoolteachers and felt they were more interested in keeping the kids quiet than teaching them.  The wall refers to the emotional barrier Waters built around himself because he wasn't in touch with reality.  The bricks in the wall were the events in his life which propelled him to build this proverbial wall around him, and his schoolteacher was another brick in the wall.

Pink Floyd's producer, Bob Ezrin, had the idea for the chorus.  He used a choir of kids when he produced Alice Cooper's "School's Out" in 1972.

The children's chorus that sang on this track came from a school nearby the studio.  It was made up of 23 children between the ages of 13 and 15.  They were overdubbed 12 times, making it sound like there were many more kids.

Alun Renshaw, head of music at the school, was enthusiastic, and said later:  "I wanted to make music relevant to the kids – not just sitting around listening to Tchaikovsky.  I thought the lyrics were great – 'We don't need no education; we don't need no thought control' ... I just thought it would be a wonderful experience for the kids."

The disco beat was also suggested by Ezrin, who was a fan of the group Chic.  This was completely unexpected from Pink Floyd, who specialized in making records you were supposed to listen to, not dance to.  He got the idea for the beat when he was in New York and heard something Nile Rodgers was doing.

Pink Floyd rarely released singles that were also on an album because they felt their songs were best appreciated in the context of an album, where the songs and the artwork came together to form a theme.  Ezrin convinced them that this could stand on its own and would not hurt album sales.  When the band relented and released it as a single it became their only #1 hit.

Various Sources