Lord help me, I agree with columnist David Brooks. I usually don’t. When I went to school shop class was a requirement. I took electric shop, metal shop, even plastic shop. We had an auto shop too so we could learn to fix cars. We also had home economics where we learned how to basically be adults and cook food.

When did they end that and focus everything on funneling every kid off to college?

Not that taking Mr. Bender’s electric shop prepared me for a job as an electrician, but it gave us exposure to fields of work that actually could sustain a good middle-class life.

The reality is America has had a class system from its inception, especially for people of color, and women vs white men.

We used to have the best schools for white protestant kids of well-to-do white protestant professional parents.

The Supreme Court, Congress, and the roles of the past Presidents are full of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton alumni. And the way they ruled from halls of government to corporate boardrooms benefitted people like themselves, not the poor and basically the rest of us.

This is perhaps every bit as much of a caste system here as they have in India, only we don’t call our poor “untouchables”. We call them public school students.

This was a terrific interview but I believe we need to do more than have brief interviews about our life and death sociological and other crises we’re living through. How about having a one-hour discussion or week-long conferences with multiple experts in a given field? Bring in policy makers, and community and corporate decision-makers and talk about how we can adapt and change to do better?

Can we move on from being a nation of talkers and commentators to one that builds, improves, and changes?