Wordpress in Ubuntu

I just installed wordpress 3.3.1 in Ubuntu (using apt-get). Right off the bat I got a PHP error trying to look at the admin page: something along the lines of "fatal error Access to undeclared static property $this" in screen.php. I went to the page and there was a reference "self::$this->" where the error was being thrown. It did seem a little odd to me trying to use a self along with $this (self is a reference to the class while $this is a reference to the instance of the class) so I removed the self:: and everything worked. I can't believe I'm the only one to run into this. Is wordpress 3.3.1 not the newest version? Is it not designed for php 5.5.3?