Customer Reviews

Moving West Songs (American History Through Folksong)

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I teach an advanced second grade class.I bought this CD for use in my unit on westward expansionn. Most of the album is very good with narration that not only introduces the song but explains westward expansion in chronological order.

A large portion of this CD deals with the social prejudice of the 1800's. About 10 the songs I will not be able to play as the lyrics are extremely demeaning to mexicans,asians, Native Americans, Latter Day Saints, and Irish Americans. One of the songs also includes "hell" in the lyrics and part of the narration talks about prostitutes in mining camps so those also not be able to be played either. It is very true that the 1800's carried a lot of social bigotry and I have no doubt these are historically accurate songs of the times, but there are hundreds of songs from the 1800's that would have been much better choices for grade school students to cover this period of American history.

If you teach secondary students this CD could be a good resource depending upon your teaching objective, but if you are an elementary teacher looking for pioneer/westward expansion songs for grade school students, a large portion of this CD will not work for you. I am not a person who likes revitionist history or believes in whitewashing historical facts to be "politically correct" but trust me;- if you play this entire CD you will have offended parents flocking to your school in droves.

In all fairness, it may be that this CD was not intended for elementary students, however, the title and description are very misleading and I thought I was buying a CD that would cover basic events of Westward Expansion through the music of the the times- and that's what I was looking for. A more appropriate title would have been "Social Prejudice During the Westward Movement."