In Alan Parker’s film (1982), in the middle of “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, the teacher catches young Pink writing in class and reads his poem aloud so that everyone laughs; the lines, in a nod to the fans, are the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s “Money”. Then he strikes his hand with a ruler. Alex McAvoy played the teacher. It is one more brick in the wall that Pink, the rock star of The Wall (Pink Floyd, 1979), builds with every wound of his life: a father killed in the Second World War, an overprotective mother, a broken marriage and school. The rock opera was written almost entirely by Roger Waters, who drew on his own memories of school in Cambridge. On the album, the song describes teachers who humiliated children and who at home, it suggests, were humiliated in turn; the film shows this one unhappy in his own marriage. Straight after comes “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2”, with a choir of pupils from a school in north London: in Pink’s fantasy, masked children march like parts on an assembly line and fall into a meat grinder, then rebel, burn the school and throw the teacher onto the bonfire. Lawrence Sherman’s defiance theory explains that sequence better than any other: punishment that humiliates teaches hatred of whoever punishes long before it teaches obedience.
// The theoryWhen punishment enrages
In 1993, Lawrence Sherman formulated defiance theory to explain a paradox deterrence did not: sometimes punishment increases offending instead of reducing it. According to Sherman, this happens when four conditions are met: the person perceives the sanction as unjust or humiliating, has weak bonds with whoever imposes it, experiences the sanction as a rejection of their person and not just of their act, and denies the shame instead of accepting it. In that case, the response is not obedience but proud defiance: doing more of what is punished, as an assertion of oneself.
Bricks of humiliation
The teacher in The Wall meets every condition Sherman described. His punishment is unjust, because writing poems is no offense. It is humiliating, because he does it in front of the whole class. And it condemns not an act, but the person: he mocks Pink for being who he is. The response, in the work, is twofold. Pink withdraws and adds a brick to the wall, and the children, together, rebel against the school. Neither reaction is the obedience the punishment sought. It is Sherman’s defiance: unjust punishment produces more resistance, not less.
// The subjectA tyrant who was also humiliated
Waters does not present the teacher as an isolated monster, but as a cog. The song suggests that these teachers were themselves humiliated at home, and took out on the children the frustration of their own lives. The teacher represents an institution, the post-war British school, rigid, authoritarian and obsessed with discipline, in which corporal punishment was legal and routine. His cruelty springs not from personal wickedness but from a system that permits and rewards it. That is why the children rebel not against him, but against the whole school.
The teacher returns at the end, in “The Trial”. In the trial Pink holds against himself inside his head, the figures who hurt him file past as witnesses, and the teacher testifies against him; the film turns him into a distorted, animated version of himself. His complaint to the judge sums him up: he always predicted the boy would end badly, and he regrets not being allowed to straighten him out his own way. Not even in the fantasy does he acknowledge the harm. For him, Pink’s failure proves that more punishment was needed, and that is the logic Sherman dismantled: the authority that humiliates reads the rebellion it provokes as confirmation that it was right.
The schoolmaster
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// The crackAn abuse that was legal
Applying a theory of crime to The Wall requires acknowledging that the teacher commits no crime under the law of his time. In the United Kingdom, corporal punishment was legal in state schools until a 1986 Act abolished it, with effect from 1987. What defiance theory reveals is not a crime, but a form of authority that produces rebellion, and in that sense it explains the pupils better than the teacher.
The sociologist Paul Willis, in Learning to Labour (1977), studied working-class boys at an English school who rebelled against the institution, and found that their defiance came at a price: it condemned them to the manual jobs to which the school was destining them anyway. Rebellion against school does not always liberate.
Perceived justice
Defiance theory underlies research on procedural justice, developed by Tom Tyler: people obey rules more when they perceive that authority treats them with respect, listens to them and decides impartially. At school, that translates into discipline that corrects behavior without humiliating the person, and into coexistence programs that replace arbitrary punishment with clear, explained rules. The teacher in The Wall is the example of what not to do.
Three key ideas
- Sherman’s defiance theory (1993) holds that an unjust and humiliating sanction, imposed by an authority with which there is no bond, produces more rebellion instead of deterring.
- The teacher in The Wall ridicules Pink in front of the class for writing poems and mistreats the pupils; Pink withdraws behind his wall and the children sing against the school.
- The crack: corporal punishment was legal in British state schools until the 1986 Act that abolished it, and Willis showed that school rebellion does not always liberate: it can condemn the rebels to what school had already destined them for.
Sources · further reading
- Sherman, L. W. (1993). “Defiance, Deterrence, and Irrelevance: A Theory of the Criminal Sanction”. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30(4), 445-473.
- Tyler, T. R. (1990). Why People Obey the Law. Yale University Press.
- Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Saxon House.
- Gershoff, E. T. (2002). “Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences”. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 539-579.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is El maestro?
El maestro (“The Wall”) is a villain from The Wall, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He took the exercise book, read the poems aloud and the class laughed.
Why does The schoolmaster (The Wall) become a villain?
Sherman explained why punishment that humiliates hardens instead of correcting. The teacher in The Wall proves it by reading Pink’s poems aloud so the whole class can laugh.
Which criminological theory explains El maestro?
El maestro's case is analysed through Defiance. Lawrence Sherman’s defiance theory (1993) holds that a sanction experienced as unjust, imposed by an authority that humiliates, does not deter but provokes anger, pride and further rebellion, especially in those with weak bonds to that authority. In The Wall (Pink Floyd, 1979), Roger Waters’s rock opera, the teacher at Pink’s school ridicules him in front of the class for writing poetry, mistreats the pupils and represents an education that turns them into identical parts of a machine. “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2”, with its chorus of schoolchildren against school, was number one in much of the world. In 1980, South Africa banned it when it was adopted by students protesting against apartheid education.
