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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 somet

by ellius 8y ago

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? Well, let me tell you about World War 1... Obviously there would need to be some linearity to each individual chapter, but moving backwards in time at the thematic level absolutely seems possible and even advantageous in certain respects. History is a very different subject from the sort of applied technical things you're describing. But in fact you might be making a good argument for doing it this way: you're describing the need for some kind of anchor in a knowledge graph. There probably isn't a better anchor than the current existing world as everyday people experience it. Why not start there?

skellera 8y ago
I think it only sounds like a good idea because you already know the details of what comes before. If you had absolutely no knowledge of history, I think this method would not work well. There are so many details that led up to WW2 that going backwards would just feel messy. All the things happening in Europe would have to be described in a way where you already know about the next war but now have to list off these different events. I don't think that going backwards is going to make things interesting for anyone who isn't going to be interested in it forwards. The technique of teaching (a good teacher) will do more for this than teaching things backwards.
- ellius 8y ago
  I see what you mean but that's sort of what I meant by doing it linearly at a topic level. Absolutely, you don't want to start with the end of World War 2 and then move backwards to its causes. But I think it's entirely feasible to learn about the Cold War, then study WW2, then study WW1, etc... I don't know, I don't have especially strong feelings about it, but it definitely seems at least viable.
- setr 8y ago
  I would imagine ww2 best described in both orders: you start with the main participants, their alliances, and their general strategies/incentives, then you iterate over each country prior to the war, and why they started to get involved in it, and finally you discuss the war itself, and its major events
benbreen 8y ago
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.
- ellius 8y ago
  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.

by ellius 8y ago

skellera 8y ago

I think it only sounds like a good idea because you already know the details of what comes before. If you had absolutely no knowledge of history, I think this method would not work well. There are so many details that led up to WW2 that going backwards would just feel messy. All the things happening in Europe would have to be described in a way where you already know about the next war but now have to list off these different events. I don't think that going backwards is going to make things interesting for anyone who isn't going to be interested in it forwards. The technique of teaching (a good teacher) will do more for this than teaching things backwards.

ellius 8y ago
I see what you mean but that's sort of what I meant by doing it linearly at a topic level. Absolutely, you don't want to start with the end of World War 2 and then move backwards to its causes. But I think it's entirely feasible to learn about the Cold War, then study WW2, then study WW1, etc... I don't know, I don't have especially strong feelings about it, but it definitely seems at least viable.
setr 8y ago
I would imagine ww2 best described in both orders: you start with the main participants, their alliances, and their general strategies/incentives, then you iterate over each country prior to the war, and why they started to get involved in it, and finally you discuss the war itself, and its major events

benbreen 8y ago

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.

ellius 8y ago
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.