Icon or Symbol: A Teacher's Moral Dilemma

Icon or Symbol: A Teacher's Moral Dilemma

Works Cited Missing

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 heard 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 and, 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 Prince 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. What 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 train 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.