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We Should Teach Music History Backwards

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#131

Post by bane »

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. History backwards is a "this is why this is so" lesson.

While history forwards is..."here's some stuff, it'll all make sense in a few years if you keep studying".

Understanding how we've arrived here, and all the connections going backwards can be profoundly enlightening, allowing you to try to project events forwards, because cause and effect are laid out for you.

Memorizing books full of facts just turns you into an encyclopedia and don't really let you try to understand how to break the present down to get at what the driving forces are behind the now.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#133

Post by inimino »

JasonFruit wrote: post #126
inimino wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the best answer, but it raises a difficult question, which is what do you do with a classroom of thirty students?

I don't have the slightest idea — that's why I teach my own kids.

Which is a great answer too, though our modern life puts it out of reach for most.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#134

Post by tzs »

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 don't think that would work with literature, because modern literature often makes allusions to earlier literature.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#135

Post by arbie »

oldsklgdfth wrote: post #7
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often argue the same for computer science education: either teach backwards, or start at the abacus.

I we started with the abacus schooling would take a while. Judging by your username you want to see the world burn.

> Judging by your username you want to see the world burn.

An effective ad hominum!

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#136

Post by jaredklewis »

tzs wrote: post #134
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 don't think that would work with literature, because modern literature often makes allusions to earlier literature.

In addition to alluding to older literature, modern books also routinely refer to historic events, philosophy, developments in science, politics, religion, and just about everything else. So what, don't read any novels or poetry until you know the rest of human history and knowledge, inside and out, lest you miss a few allusions?

If we turn students off reading entirely, because we made them slog through the whole Bible (the ulitmate all-time most-alluded-to-by-English-literature champion) before letting them read something that might actually interest them, then what does it matter if they "get" the allusions?

By the way, not a slag on the Bible. I thought it was a pretty good read actually with exception of a few boring chunks in the old testament. But my humble opinion is that it will bore the shit out of the majority of high school students. I also wouldn't recommend Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce's Ulysses to high school students. They're great books if you come to them at the right time, but probably not the best tools for teaching literature.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#137

Post by forapurpose »

ramshorns wrote: post #102
c3534l wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we know if history was inevitable. How much do we attribute to specific events because they're the ones that happened, rather than simply the result of deeper, sociological, economic, and cultural causes? The best we can do is explain what we can explain, and I don't know if trying to teach people that history is essentially random is even a goal that you should strive for to begin with.

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."

> 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 is luck. And when a set of actions together have large consequences, sometimes it's just (un)fortunate coincidence.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#138

Post by mehwoot »

jcranmer wrote: post #115
c3534l wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem with that approach is that you can end up begging the question and not realizing that your proposed answers start to deviate wildly from evidence. For Jared Diamond, the answer to the question of European domination is solely that Eurasia won the agricultural jackpot [1] and the Americas lost it, and anything that happened in the intervening 10,000 years doesn't factor into it. But... the Americas won the…

100% completely ignores... why didn't China dominate?

Have you even read the book? It's mentioned and he gives possible reasons for it, even though it isn't the focus of the book.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#139

Post by madhadron »

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…

No. We already know this is a bad idea. It's seen most clearly in the history of science, where people want to trace back just the theories that worked as opposed to looking at all the options being worked on at a given time. See the Strong program.

In more general history, it leads you to founding myths and connecting largely unconnected things like modern France to Charlemagne's Frankish empire.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#140

Post by madhadron »

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…

Except that Jared Diamond cherry picks material to fit a theory he already came up with. His "history" has little to no relation to actual course of history.

He's one of the authors, like Gavin Menzies and Ayn Rand, that make me automatically disqualify my interlocutor from knowing what they're talking about.

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