Selling a culture of ignorance to the young by Jon Rappoport

Selling a culture of ignorance to the young

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Selling a culture of ignorance to the young: key moments   Sam Cooke: Don't know much about anything, what a wonderful world   By Jon Rappoport   As my readers know, I've been documenting the downfall of education in America for a long time. My basic logic course, contained in my collection, The Matrix Revealed, is one antidote.   Aside from what happens and what doesn't happen in the classroom, the promotion of a popular culture devoted to glorifying ignorance certainly erodes children's ambition to learn.   Let's return to a "more innocent time" to pick up a clue, and a turning point.     Wonderful World, composed by Sam Cooke, Herb Alpert, and Lou Adler, broke on to the scene in 1960. It had legs. Later covers of the tune climbed the charts in 1965 and 1978, and then Cooke's original performance was resurrected as a hit in 1985 and 1986:   Don't know much about history Don't know much biology Don't know much about a science book, Don't know much about the french I took But I do know that I love you, And I know that if you love me, too, What a wonderful world this would be   Just another sentimental popular tune; who cares? No one; except the lyric awoke a vast underlying YES in many hearts.   I don't know nothin', but love will carry the day, and the world will be wonderful then.   The obvious message: there is a shortcut to happiness. Learning is beside the point. It's irrelevant. Just listen, the singer has found the key. He's basically ignorant, but it doesn't matter. If he can convince Her to love him, he has the answer the world has been waiting for.   He's the hero. He's the example.   Knowledge is just a con. It gets in the way. It creates adults. That's a horrible fate. Remaining a child wins the prize. Children don't have to worry. All they need is love. Let's somehow reduce EVERYTHING to THAT.   As for Sam Cooke himself, well, he began singing with a group when he was six, he later composed a number of hit tunes, he launched his own record label (SAR), he put together his own music publishing company and a talent-management outfit. I don't know what he knew and didn't know, but he knew something. He worked tirelessly for years. (At the age of 33, in 1964, he was shot and killed in a Los Angeles motel. The circumstances surrounding his death are in dispute.) Point is, the Cooke who was singing about being ignorant was far from ignorant---as is the case with many performers who convincingly launch childlike sentiments to audiences for mass consumption. But these audiences, enveloped in the "feelings," rarely bother to consider the source and the intelligence of the source.   Popular culture is a back-and-forth affair. The artist relays a quick dream, and the public buys it, because the dream arouses some latent idea that proposes a shortcut to happiness. An out.   The artist and his handlers are always looking for the fabled hook; the phrase that will pull in the crowd and galvanize their reaction.   Eventually, after years of swimming in pop culture, the tuned-up audience is conditioned to the notion that life's secret has to be one hook or another. Little else is important.   Certainly, work is not important. Striving is not important. Ambition is not important. One's own creative impulse is not important. Learning is not important. Those are all dead ends. Instead, something much simpler and easier (and vaguer) has to be the key.   In the realm of politics, there is a carryover. The answer in that arena would be simple, too. Greatest good. Love everybody right now. Kinder, gentler. I feel your pain. It takes a village. No child left behind. Hope and change. Yes we can.   Don't know much about a science book, Don't know much about the french I took But I do know that I love you, And I know that if you love me, too, What a wonderful world this would be   If you just took the last three lines of that lyric and eliminated the rest, you'd have...nothing. No hook, no impact. But add the "don't know" piece, and you're striking gold. Because the audience of mostly young people wants the "don't know." That's what they're looking for. A boil-down into the effortless item that allows them to win what they yearn for, by pleading ignorance. Perfect.   Don't know much about history Don't know much biology Don't know much about a science book, Don't know much about the french I took But I do know that I love you, And I know that if you love me, too, What a wonderful world this would be Don't know much about geography, Don't know much trigonometry Don't know much about algebra, Don't know what a slide rule is for But I do know that one and one is two, And if this one could be with you, What a wonderful world this would be Now, I don't claim to be an "A" student, But I'm tryin' to be For maybe by being an "A" student, baby, I can win your love for me Don't know much about history, Don't know much biology Don't know much about a science book, Don't know much about the french I took But I do know that I love you, And I know that if you love me, too, What a wonderful world this would be History Biology Science book French I took But I do know that I love you, And I know that if you love me, too, What a wonderful world this would be   I can't resist tossing off a salute to the Beatles, because if you think Sam Cooke was scraping the bottom of the barrel, his lyric was Shakespearean laid alongside the 1963 Lennon/McCartney offering, I Want to Hold Your Hand. This was not the Beatles of Eleanor Rigby or even Hello, Goodbye. It was the early rocket that set off the first US explosion of Beatlemania.   Get a load of this lyric:   Oh yeah I tell you somethin' I think you'll understand When I say that somethin' I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand Oh please say to me You'll let me be your man And please say to me You'll let me hold your hand Now, let me hold your hand I want to hold your hand And when I touch you I feel happy inside It's such a feelin' that my love I can't hide I can't hide I can't hide Yeah, you got that somethin' I think you'll understand When I say that somethin' I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand And when I touch you I feel happy inside It's such a feelin' that my love I can't hide I can't hide I can't hide Yeah, you got that somethin' I think you'll understand When I feel that somethin' I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand   The single of the song sold five million copies in the US. It was folded into an album, Meet the Beatles!, which soon piled on another 3.5 million sales. The 1960s were off and running.   Nothing would ever be the same.   I'm told the real hook in I Want to Hold Your Hand is the opening phrase: "Oh yeah." The kids loved it right away.   And if you want culture, you've got to go to the kids. They know what's happening. They're on the cutting edge...   Of the cliff.   It quickly became apparent to ad agencies, and corporations, and politicians, and media barons, and even the medical cartel, that targeting children was the new Thing. Don't raise them. No. Bring the adults down to the child's level.   That was the breakthrough.   The kiddies want what they want when they want it.   Convert society into a diaper-dream.   Hawk that dream from Norway to the southern tip of Argentina.   Buttress it with psychological clap-trap.   Call it, I don't know, something like...   Utopia.   Yes, that'll work.   As long as no one THINKS.   Oh yeah.   If you reduce the English language to the level of the two songs I've presented here, why would children in school want anything more?   They already believe they know the secret of life.   And if the "secret" doesn't deliver the goods, it's an easy step for the children to then consider themselves victims.   After that, the trip downhill happens quickly.

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Jon Rappoport The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.

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