To further explain what I mean is instead of just picking important dates through history and working towards today is it reasonable or is anyone trying to teach from current events backwards into the past?
I have a bachelor's in history, and obtained a Master's in Teaching, and then focused on teaching mathematics rather than history.
There's actually a lot of really good reasons, not so much the 'effects before cause', but because everyone who is born suffers from a necessary 'flattening' - the world that I was born into simply 'is' the world, another way of saying 'presentism'.
So by teaching history from the present backwards, we can constantly reference the world that the students know, and build up a backstory that explains the world they can see.
The reason this doesn't happen a lot more often is because state standards call for state history to be taught often in the 9th grade, and American history to be taught often to Juniors. There's this idea that we want citizenry and civics to be taught to the strongest reasoners.
The approach that you take has a certain beautiful symmetry to it - we could teach citizenry and civics to 7th and 8th graders, contextualizing the world they are in, and the move backwards to American history in the 8th and 9th, move backwards through America's foundation and European expansionism, and then finally land in the ancient world.
Another problem with this approach is that you're asking students to understand local history - but it's not as if you're really going to get into any solid international politics. So when you get to the part of the ancient world which is relevant to modern politics, you don't really have the time and scope to have covered enough of the arab or chinese world to make ancient history's explanatory power relevant.
Are you talking about serious academics only, or including elementary school?