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We Should Teach Music History Backwards

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#181

Post by forapurpose »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #153
forapurpose wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the best explanation of history to teach, if not the most correct, is "history happened the way that it did because of trillions of choices that people made." Many times it's just luck. The existence of life at all, the death of the dinosaurs, the ice ages, droughts, famines, epidemics (e.g., the Black Plague) ... all luck. From an entire society's perspective, one or a few people who discover something big i…

> From an entire society's perspective, one or a few people who discover something big is luck. Do we have cases of that in history at all ? All the important scientific, technological and social breakthroughs I can think of are clear, incremental extensions of contemporary state of knowledge and societies. Individuals who were at the right place and with right skills are attributed the discoveries, but the truth is,…

There is an endless debate among historians, AFAIK, about whether events are due to structural (that is, systemic) issues or due to personal agency - the 'great person' hypothesis.

You are talking about science, which if course is one narrow domain; and even in science, I tend to agree with you but if there were no paradigm shifters (using Kuhn's model) such as Newton, Darwin, or Einstein, would we have made those discoveries? Would the whole course of research in those fields have changed? Changed to where we are now? Soon after those people? At all? If it's inevitable, why weren't those things discovered outside Europe? Was the Enlightenment, the foundation of the scientific revolution, inevitable? Again, if so, why not elsewhere? Why not 1,000 years earlier?

In geopolitical matters, would the world be the same without Napoleon, the founders of the U.S., Lenin, or Hitler? What about Admiral Nelson? What if someone else was U.S. President on 9/11? Clinton? Trump? Would the world be the same without Moses, Jesus or Mohammad?

My point is not that I know the answers, but that it's not so clear cut that outcomes are due to structural reasons.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#182

Post by drb91 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #172
drb91 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The academic work of history and teaching history to non-historians have different constraints; the latter requires certain reduction to causality. Or at least that seems like the current state of affairs. I’m not necessarily a fan, but it’s better than no education at all.

Disagree totally. It is more important here. The reason we teach the humanities to non-experts is to teach empathy and the ability to fully separate from your own context. Teaching history backwards sabotages this effort.

Where and when and with whom would you propose teaching people? This is a solvable problem, but you have to justify being ABLE to just do it right the first time.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#183

Post by dgellow »

dghughes wrote: post #180
dgellow wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about this. How do you do that? Shouldn’t you still have to read the statement forward to then be able to read it backward? I can see in lispy languages how you could do that, because of the structure of S-Expressions, not sure how you would do that with more conventional syntaxes (let’s say C-like). I think that personally I do a lot of back-and-forth in-between forward and backward reading to construct the…

As I say I am a terrible programmer the best example I could think of was this for Python 3. float_num = float(input("Enter float num: ")) The way I read it is: I need to enter a number, the number is input, it's a float, that number will be assigned to the variable float_num. It's not the best example but for me at certain times it's far clearer. Most times it seems like I am reading the equivalent of a person writi…

Yep, that makes sense said like that :)

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#184

Post by haskellandchill »

linkmotif wrote: post #32

This is part of an enormous cultural trend in the US that has determined that people need to be tricked or somehow otherwise eased into learning, because otherwise learning is too boring! This trend is responding to a real issue, because capitalism has so successfully neutered the common man into a entertainment/carbohydrate consuming machine that the desire or need to learn is only associated with the need to earn a…

You are really smart. Can I work with you? Ha.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#185

Post by nautilus12 »

developer2 wrote: post #147
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…

Why is it _always_ Bach? Every single time I hear the entirety of recorded music's history being dissected, Bach is the first - often the only - example brought to attention. Have this many people subjectively decided for themselves that Bach deserves this credit? Or do schools of music have a habit of teaching that Bach is objectively the best, as if it's a fact grounded in science? Bach is to music as Shakespeare i…

Have you ever sat down and listened to bach??

One meter of Chaconne in D minor has more aesthetic value and beauty than the entirity of Kanyes work. The author is essentially suggesting we just cut out raw organic food and eat processed food all the time

Eating McDonalds teaches me exactly 0 about fine french cuisine

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#186

Post by nautilus12 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #120
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…

What is "too much" and "not enough" when it comes to what a student is passionate about? I think there's currently a tremendous, almost unbelievably large, over-emphasis on music that has a written score in most music programs, which leaves out literally everything that is popular and contemporary. One has to specifically pursue those subjects in elective classes (there are jazz programs that make it up through the 7…

You enable the student to follow their passions with more capability if you inform them of the collective intelligence of hundreds of years of progress, which happened to take place in Europe. That is not eurocentrism this is just recognition of the reality of history.

If you dont like that build a time machine and change history.

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