First, before we start analyzing the lyrics, I think it’s convenient to see the image of the moment in the music video for this song that gives us a hint of its meaning:
What we see in this image is a teacher wearing a dunce cap, tied to a post probably by his students. In popular culture, a dunce cap is a pointed hat typically made of paper given to schoolchildren to wear as punishment by public humiliation for misbehavior and stupidity. Although the image conveys the message that teachers deserve to wear this hat, the song, as we will see, also gives the students and the whole society a part of the responsibility for playing a role in the farce of formal education.
The lyrics start with:
“Load up on guns; bring your friends
It's fun to lose and to pretend”
The first line is a reference to school tribalism, used mainly as an introduction to the environment but also to denounce the hostile situation teenagers are forced to live in schools. The second line, on the other hand, gives teenagers their share of the responsibility for going to school and being submissive to teachers, acting as if they were kids. That's what the song presents as losing and pretending: They lose because in the first place it was not their intention to go to school, and they pretend that they are still kids by obeying orders.
“She's over-bored and self-assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word”
Being taught things which you are not interested in learning is boring. When teachers give you good grades for temporarily learning those things they taught, that’s self-assuring. Then, who is the “she” that is over bored? Who is the “she” that is self-assured? That “she” is the mind of the student, and that’s the dirty word in school: “mind.” Dirty words are forbidden words, and since words represent concepts, they are also forbidden concepts. On the other hand, as we will see later, this song makes some references to the Spanish language, and in Spanish the word mind is feminine, which means that it can be called “she” instead of “it.”
“Hello, hello, hello, how low”
This line, which is repeated almost four times in a row, is a relation between the world 'hello,' with which students greet the teacher, and the question "How low?," which is a way of asking “how low can we go?,” a usual question that makes reference to a situation as an indignity. The song presents the situation of students in school as an indignity.
“With the lights out, it's less dangerous”
Saying “the lights” is a traditional way of referring to the knowledge. This line states that the real purpose of formal education is to keep students away from knowledge, on the excuse that in that way they are less dangerous to society.
“Here we are now; entertain us”
This line is supposed to be a message from the students to the professor, which is seen as the leader of a show that entertains students to keep them away from knowledge. Since there are bad ways of entertaining people, this entertainment is not necessarily funny.
“A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido
Yeah, hey”
The four nouns in these lines (mulatto, albino, mosquito, and libido) are words that belong both to the English and to the Spanish language, and in both languages they have the same meanings. These song lines try to emulate a Spanish class, something usual in US schools, and end with a scream in the word “libido,” in this way complaining about what the song states as a hidden purpose of education, the sublimation of the teenagers’ libido.
“I’m worst at what I do best
And for this gift I feel blessed
Our little group has always been
And always will until the end”
The idea behind the previous lines is that schools are designed to provide the worst grades to the most intelligent persons. In popular culture students with good grades are labeled as intelligent, when in fact the good grades just prove that they are submissive, a trait of personality that doesn't go hand in hand with intelligence. The “little group” that has always been is the group of people that are not submissive, and therefore find it hard to obey the teacher's orders. This is the “gift” for which the singer feels blessed: not being submissive.
“And I forget just why I taste
O yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard; it's hard to find
Oh well, whatever, never mind”
This is the proof that the song offers of the farce that schools are: The fact that they don't explain something as basic as the real reason why human beings have a sense of taste. Maybe this piece of knowledge is hard to find, all right, but the fact that schools don’t teach something so basic to human life proves that the formal education’s alleged purpose of giving important and useful knowledge to students is a lie. Although the phrase "never mind" is usually used as a way of saying “It doesn’t matter,” here it has another meaning: It’s stating that teachers are there to prevent students from using their minds. With that meaning, “never mind” is an expression of the teachers’ secret motto.
Then the song repeats some previous lines and ends up repeating nine times the phrase “a denial.” This states the final idea: That the whole praise of formal education is a denial of its real nature and that the whole society, including politicians, fathers, teachers, and students, participate of this denial. (© Copyright 2011 Homer is Faking on homerisfaking.blogspot.com)
