Estranged former federal Conservative leadership contender, cabinet minister and MP Maxime Bernier tells Steve Paikin about his newly-minted People’s Party of Canada, and why he believes it deserves a voice on the national stage.
Dennis Prager: America’s Ideological Landscape
Sydicated radio host, columnist and author Dennis Prager joins Steve Paikin to discuss the culture in the U.S. that supports media slanted to conservative thinking.
The Undoing of History: Steve Paikin Interview
03:56second year and I don’t think we excitethat love of learning to make themalways come back to become historymajors now that’s interesting you’relooking in the mirror for part of theexplanation here so what are you eitherdoing or not doing that you think iscontributing to this fall off yeah Imean I think what Chris was talkingabout you know we’re losing theeducation pathway we’re losing the lawpathway that’s fine but I look at artsand say we’re losing majors more thanother arts disciplines why is that wellI think part of it is that we sometimeswe try to sell histhey come into our clusters and we tryto say come here for critical thinkingcome here for writing skills come herefor your communication skills and that’sfine but that doesn’t really get to thecore of what makes history special andthe core is to me the core is anunderstanding of ambiguity andunderstanding of context the ability totake scattered isolated data pointsfound in an archive or a library hereand weave it together into a reallycompelling story that fires up studentsfires up audiences what do you when youlook in the mirror what whatresponsibilities do you think the wayyou teach and your professors teachright there’s two elements to theirsthey’re the objective conditions we cansay and I’m speaking now like a storyand I guess the financial crisisgenerally the the mood of especiallyNorth America of focus on identitypolitics etc and then there are thesubjective elements of what shouldadministration’s history departments oreven individual faculty members – Ithink that this this crisis or minicrisis could be a blessing in disguisebecause it could shake us a bit and makeus really consider how we’ve beendealing with teaching history andattracting students there’s a number ofthings I think that we can do we can Imean I hate to use this word but in thecommercial mindset that we’re all in wecan mark it history a little bit betterwe don’t know the exact figures here inCanada the Canadian HistoricalAssociation hasn’t done a good study onreally how well do history mate how welldo is how well do history majors do inthe in the market after they graduateand they actually do very well very wellexceptionally well in fact they evencompete with some of these sciencemajors in terms of getting jobs there’sa rather low unemployment among historymajors they tend to earn good payingjobs and it’s an excellent criticalthinking yesterday in fact the AmericanHistorical Association has documentedthat there’s a large number of employersof stem majorswho lament the fact that they wish theirtheir employees knew a bit more abouthistory about liberal arts etc I meanthat’s that’s one thing we can marketourselves a bit better the other thing Ithink is that we really need to takeanother look at the way we teach andthat is also rather complex well let’sget into that here chris is theresomething about the way you and yourcolleagues stand at the front of a classand teach 18 19 year old young peoplethat’s not resonating today in a way itmight have 25 or 30 years ago so maybe Imean I I’m 46 so I don’t know really anymore but I think that you know thisacademic specialization is a problemright we specialized we company butespecially that specialization happenseverywhere in every field I think whatmatters in history is that when wespecialize we tend to assume thatstudents are going to are going to beinterested in the particular niches thatwe’re interested in and you know thatthe essence of history is what happenedwhen did it happen and we all want totalk about the why and get aget argueabout it you know but students coming inat 17 18 years old they don’t have thewhat and win and we just have to focuson what happened when did it happen andhave some confidence that the historywe’re gonna teach it matters and theyneed to know this I want to follow up onthat Ian how difficult is it to engageyoung people in history in the
The Internet’s Mid-Life Crisis: The Agenda with Steve Paikin
In the 1990s the internet was thought of as democratic and anarchic. Then came social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; political movements such as the Arab Spring; and Amazon and Google galvanized the attention spans of millions of users. The Agenda looks at the internet’s original promise, its milestones, and the future of the hyper-connected world.