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We Should Teach Music History Backwards

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Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#61

Post by bambax »

coldtea wrote: post #53
bambax wrote: post #19

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 n…

> 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. That, besides being totally unintuitive to our sense of time, puts even bigger emphasis on making the future seem inevitable (the past harvested as the "see…

Some seeds grow, some don't. Just because we look for seeds that lead to the future, doesn't mean they were there (things happen for no reason) or that there weren't many other seeds that didn't bear fruit, or later, or differently.

Think about your family tree: does it make more sense to try and search for your ancestors, or to find some guy in the 13th century and compile a list of all of his descendants?

You can do both, of course, and for some very important historical figures it's important to list their descendants; but for you personally, what approach feels more logical?

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#63

Post by benbreen »

ellius wrote: post #34
tsenkov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't imagine how this would work. Even in cinema I rarely like this approach (telling a story backwards). In music history I think it makes sense to go a couple of steps backwards (if you are just a fan trying to better understand their preferences), but if you are really interested - you have to start from the beginning and look how things have developed. Same thing in programming - starting up with some…

I think it might actually work. In teaching "history," you are always picking an essentially arbitrary starting point. I think you could easily start with something like nuclear negotations between the Soviet Union and the USA, then work backwards from there. Why was it these two powers that had nuclear weapons? Well, let's talk about World War 2... How did this Hitler guy come to power in Germany in the first place?…

I think people in this thread might be overstating the degree to which history isn't already taught this way. I just got done teaching a world history class (from the Paleolithic to 1500) at a university. Granted, we don't tend to teach classes like this in a completely reversed chronological order, like Pulp Fiction or something. But I began the course with the famous "hockey stick" graph of human population and had them think throughout the class about how we got to where we are. Was farming inevitable? Were world empires? Was the Industrial Revolution? If yes, why? And if not, how might it have gone differently?

The class was oriented entirely around the starting point of our present (both as a group of people living in a university town in California and as a global society). We worked backward from that present to key in on some of the main changes of the past several thousand years, notably the origin of written language, agriculture, urbanized societies, global trade, and science. Teaching world history without that present-day hook would be virtually impossible because there is just too much to cover and you need some kind of limiting factor. As you note, the best anchor is the current existing world, so that's what world history teachers tend to use.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#64

Post by blazespin »

tsenkov wrote: post #26
bambax wrote: post #19

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 n…

I honestly can't imagine how this would work. Even in cinema I rarely like this approach (telling a story backwards). In music history I think it makes sense to go a couple of steps backwards (if you are just a fan trying to better understand their preferences), but if you are really interested - you have to start from the beginning and look how things have developed. Same thing in programming - starting up with some…

Simple. You pick a current event. A, and say how it was influenced by this historical event B, and how it was motivated by an even more historical event C.

The only real advantage over starting with C, is that you have the motivating current event A to capture the attention of your students.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#65

Post by sbilstein »

If you start taking music lessons, you might learn some simple pop songs first and move your way backwards to older, often complex pieces that have stood the test of time. I don’t think everyone just starts learning music playing Bach or medieval music. It’s far far less of a straight path than this article suggests.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#66

Post by ellius »

benbreen wrote: post #63
ellius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might actually work. In teaching "history," you are always picking an essentially arbitrary starting point. I think you could easily start with something like nuclear negotations between the Soviet Union and the USA, then work backwards from there. Why was it these two powers that had nuclear weapons? Well, let's talk about World War 2... How did this Hitler guy come to power in Germany in the first place?…

I think people in this thread might be overstating the degree to which history isn't already taught this way. I just got done teaching a world history class (from the Paleolithic to 1500) at a university. Granted, we don't tend to teach classes like this in a completely reversed chronological order, like Pulp Fiction or something. But I began the course with the famous "hockey stick" graph of human population and had…

Yeah you're entirely right. I was a history student in undergrad and graduate school, and obviously this sort of thing does occur naturally in some courses. But I do think it's still fairly rare that someone intentionally strategizes working backward in a rigorous way. I mean again, I don't consider this some be-all-end-all, I just consider it a viable strategy (among many alternative viable strategies). Mostly I'm responding to the opinion that this couldn't feasibly work.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#67

Post by jradd »

Wouldn't we need to understand history forwards before teaching history backwards anyways, effectively nullifying this idea?

This idea reminds me of how artificial intelligence might conceptualize a subject, but doesn't make sense for the corpus of history.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#68

Post by badminton1 »

bambax wrote: post #19

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 n…

Learning history is fun, for example:

The British East India Company was the largest drug cartel of the 19th century. They forced the Chinese to buy opium, and decades later that opium made it to the Americas. Each time you turn on the TV and hear about of some random dude overdosing with illegal opioids, you can blame the British for that.

Lawrence of Arabia, the Sykes-Picot agreement, among other British interventions, helped create a state of permanent war in the Middle east. Each time you hear of war or violence in the Middle East, or some kid being blown up by a drone or burned alive with white phosphorus, you can blame the British for that.

However, they're not seen as the villains of history, we speak their language and some idiots wear t-shirts with their flag. Go figure.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#70

Post by droidist2 »

bambax wrote: post #19

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 n…

I agree! Starting from the beginning in history is boring because it has little relevance to other things you know. Going backwards would solve that. You'd be engaged at the beginning and then for the next part you'd remember what you learned, etc.

Also by teaching from the beginning you tend to learn the same things over and over. I probably learned about Paul Revere in 3-4 different US history classes growing up, but the Cuban Missile Crisis only once.

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