RK: You know, it's interesting because just a couple of weeks ago I interviewed John Taylor Gatto who is an award-winning, the best teacher of the year for New York City and then New York State and he wrote a couple of books about how schools dumb us down. You and he describe the same thing, how the history of American education comes from the Prussian educational model, preparing students to be obedient soldiers and compliant citizens and that that's what our schools are still working to do and really what you talk about is how they really have to drastically change and just doing that anymore is just no good for America. So, where should it go?
AH: Well, first of all, we need to acknowledge that right now we cannot possibly continue to fail our children. I mean we need to all agree that what passed as education reform, the Leave No Child Behind Act, was really a sham. It was exactly a bipartisan coming together that did not address the problem and that is what our system is capable of producing, it appears, just bipartisan sham. So now we really need to challenge those who stand in the way. If teachers unions stand in the way because of tenure that needs to be addressed. You know I think the President is doing some really good things here, the Race to the Top is a really good step forward. We see a real tipping point here. The people and parents are organizing, the movie is capturing people's attention and really the movie is incredibly pro-teacher. We need to make that very clear. It just acknowledges that we need to separate the good teachers from those that need to find another different job.
RK: I think that applies in so many different areas. You talked about the economists in Obama's White House and that talking with them about our financial crisis with them is like beaming back to the second century and discussing astronomy with Ptolemy. What do you think about the changes that are happening in the White House now?
AH: Well, they are good changes. I like the fact that Larry Summers is no longer or will soon not be the chief economic adviser, because Larry Summers is a brilliant man, is unfortunately somebody whose view of the world is entirely Wall Street-centric. And, that is why once Wall Street was saved, he really convinced the President that the rest would follow. You know we got Wall Street out of the woods and that is the problem-- that they underestimated the crisis in Main Street. But right now frankly what is happening in Washington is not going to change fundamentally in the next few months. I mean no dramatic bold proposals are going to come out of Washington of the kind I am suggesting in the book like the payroll tax holiday, huge infrastructure projects-- so while we are pressuring the government to do the right thing what I am saying is that we need to have some of your bottom up solutions and they are all over the country. They are happening. People are taking matters in their own hands. People are innovating. People are actually creating their own jobs rather than applying for jobs, like ETSY.com. I don't know if you've been there.
RK: Sure.
AH: There are a lot of people that are practicing their crafts, bartering with each other in swap.com, using social media to innovate, to connect with each other and to help each other. One of my favorite examples in the book is the case of Seth Reams who lost his job in Portland, Oregon as a concierge. He recognized that the one thing that he had in abundance was time and so he started a site called WeveGotTimeToHelp.org and ever since I've been talking about him and including him in the book he started getting a tremendous amount of emails and letters from around the country from people asking if he could help in their cities and towns. Over 50 cities now want to launch branches of wevegottimetohelp.org
RK: Now, I just want to point out that when you put this book together that you really did it with both head and heart. I like to quote a saying from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr that "Sometimes the head steals the heart's best blood" particularly for writers and you've really put it together, because you throw a chapter together, you really put a solid chapter together, based on statistics and analysis and discussion and then you balance it with an anecdote of somebody who is actually living through what you've described with statistics and you did a great job with that throughout the book. I really like it.
Now, going to bottom up because that is what the show is about, you say in the book "In this time of economic hardship political instability and rapid technological change, empathy is the one quality that we are most going to need if we are going to flourish in the 21st century." You mention somewhere in the book, you wrote a book a while back called the Fourth Instinct which is about connections. I think we are shifting from an information economy to a connection economy and I think that you are helping make it happen.
Basically, I an doing a transition from talking about the book to talking about Huffington Post because I really believe that what you've done with Huffington Post is to create a really cutting edge media operation that is changing the ground rules for everybody and everybody has to look at what you are doing to see how things are done. Like your new Divorce section. You're gradually, it seems like you're rolling out, one by one, new dimensions of our lives to explore as a news angle that is not done elsewhere.
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