Sherlock Holmes Removed from School Reading List

[crich70]

Originally Posted by hidari

LAME. The amount of writers that used drugs, smoked, drank and commited 'immmoral' acts would cause hundreds of books to be banned.....

'he also smoked' very lame but if you're being sarky....a good one...

And back when the books and stories were written the dangers of addiction to drugs like cocaine weren't known like they are now. Even Queen Victoria is said to have used cocaine if memory serves. Not to mention there were few treatments for a lot of ills back then. If a person was in terrible pain from some illness often only a narcotic substance was the only pain killer available. In the movie "The Shootist" for example John Wayne's character is dying of cancer and the Dr. prescribes Laudnum for his pain. One of the main ingredients in Laudnum is Cocaine.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

As for the school decision, if you were going to teach a single Sherlock Holmes story, SiS is a bad place to start. It's badly paced -- the second half is the villains' monologue. Holmes is under-developed: he openly mocks the Copernican/heliocentric theory and claims that he only learns what is absolutely necessary (i.e., footprints and cigar ash, largely) for his detective work. It's only later that Holmes is expanded into the Renaissance man that everyone remembers.......

Ah but Study in Scarlet was the first Holmes story written so naturally it is going to have a few quirks and not be as well written as later books/stories were.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Just listened to the audio collection, and Watson scolds him for opiate-use in one of the stories right after SiS. Holmes basically says that he has ADD and the opium helps. Not in those words, of course. I'll try to dig up a reference.

EDIT: Found it, "The Sign of Four" -- Holmes is using cocaine in the scene, but Watson notes that he's been also using morphine (an opiate) frequently. Watson's statement could be read as saying that the cocaine and morphine injections are a once-a-day habit -- I have no idea where that falls on the "casual/not-casual" drug scale.

I believe that Arthur Conan Doyle was drawing on his knowledge as a Dr. when he had Holmes taking morphine. It was used as a treatment against addiction back then and so having Holmes take morphine would make sense as it would help prevent him becoming addicted to cocaine. As I remember the line Dr. Watson asks him if he's taking Morphine or Cocaine today and Holmes says Cocaine, the 7% solution. So it sounds like he was trying to not get addicted to it by having it be diluted and alternating between Cocaine and Morphine.

[CazMar]

Originally Posted by SCION

Education in the U.S. has become watered down, sugar coated, and honey dipped simply because adults are too lazy to present non-homogeneous worldviews. I have a 9 year old in 5th grade and an 11 year old in 6th. I often give them reading assignments that promote critical thinking and reasoning skills. Some content most parents would avoid. It's gotten to the point where my 6th grader directly challenges things that the teachers say, unabashedly presenting a historical worldview that conflicts with his classmates and the Simple Simon textbooks. His teachers routinely say to him that's not a topic for discussion at this time. In conversing with him you'd think he is much older because he doesn't have a cotton candy view of life.

I wish more parents were like you! Teaching children to think (as opposed to simply learning what they are told) is a most rare thing and a wonderful gift to your children.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not PC, I think, in this case. Not to expose young children to this type of material is justifiable. Would you want young children to read books which were blatantly antisemitic or homophobic? There's all the rest of the Sherlock Holmes canon available to them, and they're free to read this book when they're old enough to understand it's cultural context.

Why not? We teach them about slavery. And Nazi Germany. And McCarthyism.

They're middle school kids. They are old enough to be taught that this is how some people thought in the past, and here's why it's wrong. We don't worry about them becoming Nazis when we show them Nazi propaganda posters.

We really need to stop treating kids like they're stupid. You are old enough at 12 to understand cultural context. Maybe not to its complete extent, but well enough that you can understand that ignorance leads to fear/hate, and these people were ignorant.

We keep coddle and condescend to childrens' intellect on an ever-greater scale, and it really does them a great disservice. Trying to create a Barney Fun Land bubble around them until they're 20 does not prepare them for reality, and it does not help them develop their critical thinking skills. It does nothing but stunt their intellectual growth.

And the fact of the matter is, they're exposed to worse whether you like it or not, and you can't stop them. You might as well intellectually prepare them.

[anamardoll]

S&M, the issue is not that "Mormon history is unpleasant", the issue is that we don't KNOW if Mormon history includes cold-blooded community-based murders, as this book entails. There's evidence on either side, and in a literary introduction to Sherlock Holmes, teaching the historical controversy is likely to eclipse the literary material.

[elcreative]

You may not know if Mormon history includes cold-blooded comunity-based murders but a quick Google (Danites Mormons) gives nearly 21,000 hits including links to historical research done at Brigham Young and this material confirms the Danites, their community links and the murders of opponents of Mormonism... the material is pretty convincing especially considering source and some of the other historical research that comes from other sources... and I thought that the issue was the removal of "Study in Scarlet" from a school reading list... or the ban depending on how you want to view it.

I can understand the removal from 6th graders as teachers are unlikely to have time to deal with the material properly especially with the increasing pressures on teachers to do many more valuable things than educating their charges...

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

S&M, the issue is not that "Mormon history is unpleasant", the issue is that we don't KNOW if Mormon history includes cold-blooded community-based murders, as this book entails. There's evidence on either side, and in a literary introduction to Sherlock Holmes, teaching the historical controversy is likely to eclipse the literary material.

I was talking more about the prejudicial aspect. You don't need to teach the controversy in a class where it doesn't belong.

"There is no accepted answer to that question at this time."

Done.

They gotta learn that grown-ups are humans that don't know everything sooner or later. Hell, Holmes' imperfection is a great opportunity for that particular lesson.

[anamardoll]

The book itself is prejudicial -- it portrays a large part of the early Mormon community as gangs, rapists, murderers, and thugs. Teaching the book to children and then side-stepping the obvious questions with "well, we don't know yet one way or the other" will leave children with only one interpretation to fall back on, and they're less likely to remember Sherlock and more likely to remember the "fact" that the early Mormon community was built on rape and murder.

Look, I'm not about banning literature, but I do think that this particular book is probably not the best one to teach when teaching Sherlock Holmes in schools. Even if it *is* historically accurate, there's a very good chance that Doyle got 'lucky' in that regard -- there's no evidence that I know of that he didn't make up a sensational story about a religious group without a shred of evidence and that some of the questions we have now about unsolved murders in Utah might not fit a little better than we earlier thought.

There's nothing wrong with an author writing a good story, but that doesn't mean it's the best material to teach to kids in a literature class. Similarly, I would not teach "The Satanic Verses" (which is one of my favorite books of all time) without a careful historical and religious layer over the reading -- the book wasn't written in a vacuum and shouldn't be looked at as such.

(Also, Holmes is essentially perfect. Any character flaw is an informed one, since it never gets in his way of being 100% right by the end of the book. Since there is never an element of doubt that he could be wrong, the book's conclusion is even more prejudicial. Who are we to argue with Holmes that Mormons weren't all thugs and murderers? Etc.)

[jabberwock_11]

People tend to have knee jerk reactions when they see or hear that a book has been removed from somewhere for any reason.

The fact of the matter is this: the book was NOT banned, it was NOT removed from the school, it WAS simply taken off of a reading list. Books are removed from reading lists all of the time for various reasons (sometimes they are simply not relevant any more or too difficult to relate to) and no one says a word.

The kids are perfectly free to read the book if they decide that they want to. If the book has merit and is worth the effort then it will do just fine off of the reading list. Let's face it, most kids hate HAVING to read specific books anyway. I know I always liked books much more when I had the option of reading them rather than being told what to read. Dismantling a book chapter by chapter and discussing what imagery the author was using or what certain paragraphs REALLY meant always annoyed me more than anything.

Freedom of speech is a two way street folks, if you want to be free to say or write it then you have to allow that some folks are going to want to not hear or read it. The school board took the path that they felt most comfortable with. It is not the end of the world and it does not mean that the book has suddenly become inaccessible.

[hunnymonster]

Originally Posted by crich70

Dr. prescribes Laudnum for his pain. One of the main ingredients in Laudnum is Cocaine.

Laudanum is a solution containing opium & alcohol actually... a totally cocaine-free zone.

[Jeremiah.L.Burns]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not PC, I think, in this case. Not to expose young children to this type of material is justifiable. Would you want young children to read books which were blatantly antisemitic or homophobic? There's all the rest of the Sherlock Holmes canon available to them, and they're free to read this book when they're old enough to understand it's cultural context.

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's no doubt that it is VERY derogatory towards Mormons.

Kids are a lot smarter than people give them credit for, especially when parents actually parent and guide them appropriately.

I fully intend to read my daughter "Sherlock Holmes" without worrying what she'll think about her Mormon uncle (my brother) and will also read her "Huckleberry Finn" without worrying what she thinks about a little black boy or black girl at school. I'll educate her...treat her like the intelligent person I know her to be.

Knowledge is power. Exposure to inappropriate behaviour, when treated properly, can be an extremely powerful tool.