Holmes SchoolSupplementing a homeschool literature curriculum with videos can be a good idea, but many film adaptations of classic literature fall short when it comes to faithfulness to the original source. Sleuthing for which films are worthy of school time can make any parent feel a bit like Sherlock Holmes himself.

Our family’s favorite source is The Dove Channel. There you’ll find several homeschool categories, including one dedicated to literature adaptations. This is a good place to begin looking for videos to supplement your homeschool literature study.

One video in this category we’d recommend is Sherlock Holmes: The Classic Collection, which includes four of the 1940s-era films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.

The Sherlock Holmes stories have been adapted for film more than any other in literary history. For homeschoolers, who are often traditional and religious, Holmes may seem a counterintuitive choice, since he is sometimes portrayed as a modern, rationalistic hero, devoid of faith, skeptical of the supernatural, and, indeed, in some adaptations, an atheist.

But such portrayals fall far short of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories of Holmes. “You are yourself aware,” says Holmes to a dying murderer, “that you will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes.” And later: “There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.”

“…if God send me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang” says Holmes in another story. Examples could be multiplied, including this:

“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion… It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

Holmes and Watson have quite often been set in stories outside their original Victorian context, usually in the modern day, sometimes even in the future, making Sherlock Holmes a hero for all ages. The Rathbone/Bruce series follows this course for all but two of its fourteen films, even pitting the Master Detective against Nazis in World War II for several installments. While the film stories are mostly original, they are often based on ideas from the Doyle tales; and while the portrayal of Watson is sometimes considered too buffoonish, it was Doyle himself who called Watson “stupid;” and in any case, these films are among the most influential Holmes adaptations ever created.

As always, read the stories first. But we think you’ll find Sherlock Holmes: The Classic Collection on the Dove Channel both delightful and an instructional addition to your homeschooling endeavors.