"Adult Education" is a song by American duo Daryl Hall & John Oates, released as a single in February 1984. The song was featured on the duo's second compilation albumRock 'n Soul Part 1 and was one of two new tracks that were recorded specifically for the compilation release. The single hit number eight on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Lyrics
The song centers on the plight of a teenage girl in high school. Her girlfriends only "care about what she wears" and the narrator assures her "there's life after high school." The lyrics suggest she is wiser than her years and, in fact, is receiving an education to the behavior of adults in high school.[2]
Music video
The music video to "Adult Education", directed by Tim Pope, takes place in what appears to be a torchlit stone temple or tomb. As Hall & Oates and their band sing, dance and play with modified instruments and ceremonial objects, a middle-aged man in a baseball cap organizes and wields several idols, while chanting. A teenage boy wearing a loincloth and a teenage girl draped in a white sheet cross a platform illuminated with modern lights and ascend a staircase to meet the man, who appears to bless them with an animal idol. The girl removes the sheet from her head and part of her body and the ritual continues. Eventually, both teenagers are placed on stone slabs; the boy acts terrified and appears to be restrained, while the girl lies motionless, her body draped in the white sheet. The video ends with the boy standing behind the idols' altar and the girl sitting on the stone slab in front of it, as Hall & Oates and their band continue to sing, dance and play instruments in the background. The final shots of the video are of hieroglyphs and ceremonial items scattered around the structure.
Hall later criticized the video in the book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution. "Videos began to attract wannabe Cecil B. DeMilles, directors who had almost unlimited budgets and did whatever they felt like. 'Adult Education' is a perfect example. We brought in a director I didn't know [Pope], who was newly hot. He didn't have a clue what to do with the song. The plot? I couldn't tell you."[3] On VH1's Behind the Music retrospective of Hall & Oates' career, Oates also derided many of their old videos, describing this clip as "Survivor on acid".
^Molanphy, Chris (July 31, 2021). "What a Fool Believes Edition". Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia (Podcast). Slate. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
^Sexism and Cultural Lag: The Rise of the Jailbait Song, 1955–85.JR Huffman. The Journal of Popular Culture 1987.Wiley Online Library
