The phrase "knowledge is power" is a cliché in our culture. Yet as often as we hear it from others or speak it ourselves, how often have we contemplated the process of acquiring knowledge? Is there a blueprint for obtaining knowledge and wisdom? Are we encouraging children to be intellectually curious or merely teaching them that every question has an instant and obvious answer?

In her book, The Death of Why?: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy (Berrett-Kohler Publishers), New York City policy expert Andrea Batista Schlesinger writes that,

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This is the third in a series of MyDD interviews called Hearing Progressive Voices, conducted via IM. Andrea Batista Schlesinger is the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, a progressive public policy think tank based in New York City "dedicated to challenging the tired orthodoxies of both the right and the left" and aimed at promoting "progressive public policy for social and economic fairness." I discovered the Drum Major Institute when I first moved to the city, when I met one of their staffers in a loud bar and asked her "you work where?!" But I quickly realized that this tiny shop was doing compelling work, articulating the issues at the heart of what they call again and again "the American Dream." Andrea and I discuss the origins of DMI's funny name, making an end run around Lou Dobbs, trading pundits for practitioners, and what Martin Luther King might think.

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