Schools should teach proper history not pop music, Sir Mick Jagger has suggested, after discovering that the Rolling Stones are now a topic on the GCSE syllabus.

Still rolling at 64, the rock icon was responding to a Bristol teacher who asked how best to present the cultural importance of the Rolling Stones to a class of eager history students.

Despite being the subject of numerous academic works, Sir Mick said it's only rock'n'roll and the Stones's importance in the grand scheme of things may have been overstated.

In a BBC News website question and answer session, Alison McClean wrote: "I am currently teaching my year 11 students about the impact of the Rolling Stones in preparation for their GCSE history coursework on Britain in the 1960s. How does Mick feel about being part of the history curriculum and, if he was sitting the exam himself, how would he describe the Stones's impact on Britain?"

Jagger, who passed O-level history at Dartford Grammar School in 1959, was less than impressed. "I suppose pop music was very important in the 1960s, it became perhaps too important. It was one of the things in popular culture," he said.

"Alison, I'm sure you're teaching it as part of the whole popular culture movement. I'm sure it's brilliantly accurate - or perhaps not because if you look up a lot of it, it's nonsense."

He was speaking as a concerned parent. "I have a daughter who's doing GCSEs at the moment," he revealed. "She hasn't got me in her syllabus. She's much more traditional. It's more the cause of World War I, that sort of thing."

The best he could say for lessons in Dad's role in the Sixties cultural revolution was that "it was an interesting historical tipping point".

Sir Mick benfited from a traditional schooling at Dartford where Latin was obligatory, masters donned gowns and pupils wore a cap at all times with a regulation blazer with gold trim.

His first report in June 1955 placed him fifteenth out of 30 pupils. His form master, Dick Allen, wrote that he had made "a good start". His academic performance went into steep decline after he discovered "music and girls".

Contemporaies recall a lecture young Jagger gave to the school's historical society on the blues.

The high-point of his Dartford career came when the emerging rebel led a protest against the quality of school dinners, which resulted in the dismissal of a kitchen supervisor.

"It was probably the greatest contribution to the school I ever made," Jagger told The Times in 2000, before returning to open a performing arts centre in his name. He emerged with seven O levels and two A levels in June 1961, and gained a place at the London School of Economics.

Sir Mick told the website questioners that if he had not gone on to amass a £215 million fortune from rock: "I'd be in Africa trying to help a beleaguered economy."

Figures released by the band today showed that the two-year Bigger Bang tour grossed £273.7 million, making it the most lucrative in rock history. The 144 shows drew a paid attendance of 4,680,000 fans, but the veteran rockers insist they are not done yet. "I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things and more records and more tours and we've got no plans to stop any of that really," he predicted.

But they will snub offers to play at the Glastonbury Festival in the closing slot reserved for rock legends. Sir Mick said: "I don't want to play Glastonbury on the Sunday night in the pouring rain, which is what The Who did this year.

"I was watching it on the telly, and my kids were there. I'm on the phone saying ‘it's awful'. They said it's really fun, but it didn't look fun to me. You've got to pick your slot."

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