We Should Teach Music History Backwards • Hacker News Board

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#11

Post by foob » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #3

Not just music. This applies to all of history.

It depends a lot on the specific field that you're talking about. I studied both music and physics in college, and I think that teaching the history backwards would work for music, but not for physics. You can understand modern harmonic theory without knowing the details of how it evolved out of contrapuntal theory. It would be easy to learn about the current state of music theory as is, and then extend your understanding afterwards by learning about the context and history which led to the current state. Physics isn't really like that. There's no way that you're going to understand general relativity first, and then learn afterwards that the theory evolved from Newton's laws. Some fields successively build on top of their own histories while others morph and change in such a way that knowledge of their histories is nonessential for understanding their current state.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#12

Post by Waterluvian » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #6

As a terrible programmer my trick is to read statements backwards. Maybe programming should be taught that way too not just reading of it but the history of it all the way back to Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and even weaving looms.

I do code reviews backwards. Not sure why. I'm not sure it works better.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#13

Post by lordnacho » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #6

As a terrible programmer my trick is to read statements backwards. Maybe programming should be taught that way too not just reading of it but the history of it all the way back to Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and even weaving looms.

That's what I was taught back in undergrad. I can't quite remember the context, but I do remember having to start at the end and tracing backwards when looking at some simple programs.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#14

Post by tomjakubowski » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #10

matte_black wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you teach mathematics or reading backwards?

"Backwards" is relative to the original way a subject was taught. My from my experience math is taught formula first rather than by starting with an intuition based on physical representation. Starting with developing an intuition like 3B1B and then deriving a formula would be "backwards" to how I've been taught in the past.

Gilbert Strang's lectures on linear algebra work this way. He typically first gives a simple example (like for least squares, fitting a line to three points in two dimensions) and then over the course of the lecture susses out a broader generalization / formula from the simple example.

Unfortunately, OCW seems to be having some kind of copyright issue with YouTube, but here's a link to the video anyway. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra...

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#15

Post by rullelito » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

This applies to cooking as well.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#16

Post by pishpash » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

Clickbait title. This is not teaching backwards, it is teaching it forwards but via recursion towards the causal factor. Good luck with that when the stack gets deep.

Same cautionary tale with the use of recursion.

There is a certain way that history progressed (the motivic force, so to speak) and it would make no sense to reverse the order. And given the stack issue, better not be faddish and just pick a time and go forward from there.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#17

Post by acjohnson55 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

I'm skeptical of this as a way of gaining a holistic understanding of music history, although it may be a helpful technique in the toolkit.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#18

Post by gyrgtyn » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

We should start with Black Sabbath and work forwards and back from there.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#19

Post by bambax » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

Not just music history, but history in general.

History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures.

History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past.

However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's not, we like "stories", we don't understand, don't believe in, and outright reject chance.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#20

Post by oraknabo » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

Wouldn't this limit your study to only musicians that influenced current trends?

I've definitely discovered a lot of music from digging into the influences of groups I like, but this seems like a kind of survivorship bias to only focus on the ones that have direct lineage to what's popular at the moment you're engaging in study.