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We Should Teach Music History Backwards

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Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#81

Post by Retric »

dgellow wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately when we have no idea why things happened there is zero predictive power. So, history without context is little more than a story and at best interesting. Really, nobody actually studies history going forward. We don't for example study random people's backgrounds on the off chance they might have an impact. Rather we pick important figures based on what they did and then go back and take a look at their…

> Really, nobody actually studies history going forward. We don't for example study random people's backgrounds on the off chance they might have an impact. Rather we pick important figures based on what they did and then go back and take a look at their backgrounds. I don’t believe that to be correct, actual history studies seem to be a lot of back-and-forth on topics surrounding, let’s say, a particular event that…

> topics studied.

Research is not the same as education. History education has frequently been used as indoctrination for example. This plays into why the focus is on rulers more often than say low level economic details.

Which is what I am getting at. We have a vast quantity of solid information about the past, teaching is mostly about picking what to present not how accurate something is. First grade history texts are full of inaccurate information, but that's not really relevant to their purpose.

Sure, research can get into nitty gritty details like the tradeoff in knot designs used on ships. It can be interesting, but it's impact on society is basically nonexistent.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#82

Post by dgellow »

christudor wrote: post #57
dgellow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is about what happened, not what could have happened. You can then speculate on how things could have been given some specific changes, but the fact is that we don’t know how the alternate universe would develop and evolve, and you are now closer to fiction than history. In a way it’s correct to say that it was inevitable, because it did happen. All the other alternatives didn’t, even if we believe they could…

This is not true. Ged Martin’s (critically acclaimed) ‘Past Futures’ is all about the importance of what might have happened when studying history. https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/471921

What are you disagreeing with? I don’t see what is not true, based on your response.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#83

Post by nautilus12 »

jaredklewis wrote: post #73
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…

This would not only be a great way to teach history, but also literature and probably other things like philosophy as well. In literature, it is not uncommon to start with the past reading things like the Odyssey, moving forwards to Beowulf, then Canterbury Tales, then Shakespeare, then John Milton, then Dickens, and on and on. The result is you start with the least accessible work and move forward to the most access…

I disagree in the sense that this will end up putting an overemphasis on contemporary work, and not enough on classic works. Think about how often cirriculum never gets to the end of, when such seminal and formative works such as Plato and Aristotle are fit into the last weeks you will inevietably gloss over them. We already make Gods out of our contemporary world view at the expense of downplaying the brilliance of past thinkers. I dont think we need to fan this flame. We will end up with an aesthetic that is so devoid of the basics that it barely comprehends itself, and if ever hits a dry spell will never be able to recreate its former greatness

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#84

Post by nautilus12 »

I disagree whole heartedly. This will end up putting an overemphasis on contemporary work, and not enough on classic works. Think about how often cirriculum never gets to the end of, when such seminal and formative composers such as Bach are fit into the last weeks you will inevietably gloss over them. We already make Gods out of our contemporary world view at the expense of downplaying the brilliance of past thinkers. I dont think we need to fan this flame. We will end up with an aesthetic that is so devoid of the basics that it barely comprehends itself, and if ever hits a dry spell will never be able to recreate its former greatness. The net effect will be to gradually turn our backs on the collective insights of the greats of the past

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#85

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

But this is not how historians think about history. This risks presentism. History should be understood in its own context, not by the events that came afterwards. Presenting history backwards makes it feel like prior events happened in the context of future events when historical actors had no understanding of those future events.

Instead history is best understood in the context available to the people at the time.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#86

Post by karthikb »

nautilus12 wrote: post #83
jaredklewis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would not only be a great way to teach history, but also literature and probably other things like philosophy as well. In literature, it is not uncommon to start with the past reading things like the Odyssey, moving forwards to Beowulf, then Canterbury Tales, then Shakespeare, then John Milton, then Dickens, and on and on. The result is you start with the least accessible work and move forward to the most access…

I disagree in the sense that this will end up putting an overemphasis on contemporary work, and not enough on classic works. Think about how often cirriculum never gets to the end of, when such seminal and formative works such as Plato and Aristotle are fit into the last weeks you will inevietably gloss over them. We already make Gods out of our contemporary world view at the expense of downplaying the brilliance of…

Specifically with history, contemporary topics being skipped over is not only common but an incredible disservice to humanity. Many schools spend months on Columbus but only 1-2 weeks on the entire post Cold War era. Which one is more important for future voters to understand?

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#87

Post by dgellow »

bambax wrote: post #60
dgellow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is about what happened, not what could have happened. You can then speculate on how things could have been given some specific changes, but the fact is that we don’t know how the alternate universe would develop and evolve, and you are now closer to fiction than history. In a way it’s correct to say that it was inevitable, because it did happen. All the other alternatives didn’t, even if we believe they could…

This point of view is, I think, completely false and what I was arguing against. If you toss a coin you will get one result; saying it was "inevitable" because it happened is to misunderstand everything about randomness and statistics, etc.

I think that you misunderstood my comment. I’m not arguing about probability, I’m saying that the toss of coins have already been done, and cannot be repeated or changed. That’s exactly what defines the past. You can spend time studying the details of why you got a specific result of your toss of coin (wind strength, forces applied to the toss, etc), and you can speculate that changing a parameter would have given different results, but you cannot change the toss that you did.

Now, let’s say that you have an actual toss of coin at one point in history that results in a missile being launched. The missile has been launched, that cannot be changed. The fact that tossing the coin n times more results in differents results doesn’t change the fact that the missile has been launched. Sure you can speculate what would happen if the result would have been different the first time, and your educated speculation may even be pretty good and based on strong facts, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re now in a fictional scenario.

That seems to be a rational point of view to defend, I would be interested to know what flaws you see.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#88

Post by pokemongoaway »

nautilus12 wrote: post #84

I disagree whole heartedly. This will end up putting an overemphasis on contemporary work, and not enough on classic works. Think about how often cirriculum never gets to the end of, when such seminal and formative composers such as Bach are fit into the last weeks you will inevietably gloss over them. We already make Gods out of our contemporary world view at the expense of downplaying the brilliance of past thinker…

There already is an emphasis on the experience of one's lifetime during one's life time! It's a way better way to get context on Bach by starting with something familiar - instead of forcing them to "imagine a time long long ago..." Besides, it teaches one to be superstitious - like big bang theorists :)

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#89

Post by vanderZwan »

c3534l wrote: post #80
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…

There was a great essay a while back that I can no longer find that summarized Guns, Germs, and Steel by continually asking the question "why?" It start with "Why is Western Europe and America so dominant culturally and economically?" Then regressed back to questions like "why did Europeans colonize the Americas instead of the other way around" to "why did the Europeans have steel, disease, and gunpowder but the Nati…

> It's a wonderful rhetorical device.

It is very appealing, for sure, but it runs the risk of falling into the same trap of "trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures".

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