Icon or Symbol: A Teacher's Moral Dilemma

It all happened so quickly. One moment I was at my blackboard, the next moment I was between two juvenile males who were trying to prove a "pride point" with their fists. I had, without a conscious thought about it, drawn a crown on the board. Next I h eard chairs hitting the floor and screams of profanity. I was called a not-so-nice name by one of my students, followed by his strange comment: "We know who your favorites in this class are." Another student from across the room overturned his chair an d, breath coming fast, managed to get out the words "Don't get on her, man. And don't you never mess with the crown! Don't mess with my blood, man!" Then they were at each other's throats and I was between them, not knowing what had happened.

I work at a juvenile prison for all male offenders. Quite honestly, I feel as if my students and I speak different languages sometimes. After talking to students and counselors after this incident, I discovered that the crown I had drawn to represent Pr ince Hamlet of Denmark was interpreted as a gang symbol by the members of my class. By drawing the crown, I had somehow affiliated myself with the Ghetto Boys of Indianapolis. This angered my students who consider themselves members of a rival gang. Wha t would Shakespeare think of such a situation?

I guess the real question is what do I think about such a situation and how do I define my role in the classroom? Peirce's theory of signs and his classification from the point of view of the object of the sign (representant) is helpful in understanding this classroom incident. Peirce defined a sign as "anything which is so determined by something else, called its object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant" (Houser 257). In this view, educators use signs all of the time, to interact with students. In fact, in his article "Toward a Peircean Theory," Nathan Houser relates Peirce's belief that "signs are the matter, or the substance of thought" (257). Peirce goes even further to say that life itself "is a tr ain of thought" (Houser 256). In other words, life and signs are "fundamentally related" and unseparable for all humans (Houser 257). As a teacher, I present my students with signs (representants) in hopes of helping them to understand information. Som etimes lessons revolve around coming to some sort of "consensus" and understanding of a meaning of a sign such as the literary use of theme. Often, lessons simply use representants to help relate other ideas or signs, as in the case of using the drawing of the crown to represent Hamlet's royal status.

Yet, my students did not "see" the crown as I assumed they would. Peirce's classification of signs from the point of view of the object is helpful in understanding the incident in my classroom. Peirce classified the relation of a sign to its object in o ne of three ways: as an icon, index, or symbol (Houser 266). An icon has some "quality" that is shared with the object (Houser 266, class notes). An index has a "cause and effect link" such as a weathervane predicts wind direction (Houser 266, class no tes). A symbol "denotes its object by virtue of a habit, law, or convention" (class notes). A symbol is an abstract representation of the object.

I meant for my drawing of the crown on the board to be interpreted as an icon. A drawn crown (representant) looks like the "real" crown (object) I meant it to represent. I hoped that by using this icon I could visually illustrate the power structure of Shakespeare's play Hamlet. I was going to go on to "map" the character names on the board to show their relationships in the play. Yet some of my students did not accept the drawn crown as an icon, but instead perceived it as a symbol. To them, the cro wn was a gang symbol that demonstrated their "law" of affiliation with that particular gang. It is interesting that one student actually perceived my drawing of the crown as my choosing of "favorites" in the class! He felt I had taken a side in the gang division of my classroom and that to do so was offensive and disrespectful. In turn, his comments were perceived as disrespectful by other classmates and a fight occurred. Soon a student was lying on the floor. It was as if they could see no other int erpretation for the crown. I never had the opportunity to explain that the crown was to represent Hamlet's royalty.

By understanding Peirce's classification, I now recognize that representants can be perceived in different ways (Houser 266). What is icon to me may be symbol to my students. Realizing this has two potential effects for me as a teacher: I must either t ry to learn all symbols and icons (all signs) that my students interpret differently than I do to ensure safety in my classroom or, I must use this new knowledge as a path and method for instruction. Since the former is impossible in that I will never be able to fully know my students' sign systems without being them, I intend to focus on the latter.

The interpretant related to this representant of the drawn crown was different for my students than for me. My thought (interpretant) was this picture represents Hamlet's royal state in Shakespeare's play. Some of my students thought that the picture re presents the gang power and superiority of the Ghetto Boys and Ms. Sloan is affiliating herself with that gang. This led to others defending both crown and me. This miscommunication could have been avoided had I known more about gang script and chosen n ot to use a picture that could be perceived as a "choosing sides" in an institution (gang membership) that I do not morally approve of or understand anyway. Yet I prefer to use what my students do know and understand as the basis for more learning. If I were to do this lesson again, perhaps the drawing of the crown could be a starting point for discussing the ideas we associate with it both as teacher and student. I would need to carefully and slowly introduce the drawing instead of quickly sketching it as I did before. Perhaps we would find some common ideas about the crown that relate to power, respect, and leadership. It could be a path for a discussion of how people interpret things differently which could even lead into a discussion about how d ifferent people view the so-called power of gangs. Here I could demonstrate my feelings about gang membership and it would be quite obvious I would not "take sides" in the classroom on the basis of gang affiliation!

By reflecting back on this whole situation in my classroom, I can see that the "misinterpretation," or rather, different interpretations of signs in my classroom can be a "teachable moment," a starting place to talk about people's various perceptions of a ll things in the world (the sign process). Houser makes the interesting point that "learning must be a complex interplay of ideas and experience" (270). I fully believe this. In the case of my students, I had hoped their knowledge of the definition of a crown would lead to understanding the power structure of the play. Instead, they used their prior experience with the symbol of the crown as a gang symbol, to make their interpretations. This relationship was much more immediate and meaningful to them . Had I used this experience (and had I known it existed in the first place!), I may have made their understanding of Hamlet much easier.

Also helpful to my definition of my role as a teacher is Eco's metaphor of the rhizome. The structure which "may be characterized as potentially infinite in that every point of the rhizome can and must be connected with every other point" makes the realm of learning sound very exciting! Eco believed our minds have the "possibility of an infinite juxtapositions" (Cunningham 170). For both students and teacher this model "represents the unlimited potential for meaning making or knowledge construction" (C unningham 171). How amazing that we can and do create our world and the understanding of it in this way! Yet this "inconceivable globality" makes us "construct personal structures . . . that help us 'localize' our experience" (Cunningham 172, 173). In other words, this infiniteness makes us create our own "umwelts" which results in not always understanding others' points of view and sign systems. My students' experiences are often different from my own: they are incarcerated, they may have witnessed or performed violent acts, and many have know the pain of hunger, poverty, and abuse. These are not part of my personal experience as gang membership and its language and rituals have not been. Often, this lack of collective experience serves to create misunderstanding and boundaries to learning as it did in the case of my drawing. It is important for me to try to understand as much as I can of my students' umwelts and how these umwelts "define (their) world for (them), what they believe, and what they take to be true" (Cunningham 171). I may not often agree with what I find there, but the knowledge may help me at least create a safer environment and possibly a more productive learning environment in my classroom.

I will never be able to fully understand my students. Their worlds are very different from mine and I am thankful for that. Yet by recognizing the differences and by letting my students "hear" about my world and my perceptions, perhaps it will broaden t heir experiences and give them insight into a more positive world. They need to know that their "umwelt" is not the one we all share. I need to learn more about their worlds, past experiences, and different interpretations in order to ensure safety and to make lessons relevant to them. Yet it is just as important for them to learn that different people view things in different manners. We can use our various interpretations of signs as a starting place for discussion of our often opposing value system s, to create interesting juxtapositions, and to investigate others' "personal structures" to broaden our own experiences.

Kimberly J. Sloan - Feb. 8, 1995

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