Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Volume 7, Number 2, 2006 DOI: 10.2304/ciec.2006.7.2.

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Greek Pre-schoolers Crayon the Politicians:

a semiotic analysis of children’s drawing

TAKIS BESSAS, IFIGENIA VAMVAKIDOU & ARGYRIS KYRIDIS

University of Western Macedonia, Kozani, Greece

ABSTRACT This article concerns the ways in which pre-school children use the visual arts to portray
their understanding of politicians. The purpose of this research was to discuss children’s drawings of
politicians using semiotic analysis. The use of semiotic analysis was based on the need to understand
the nature of the drawings and their relation to the ways in which children regarded their politicians.
This method can be used to analyze the particular sample of children’s drawings as there is an
‘intention to inform’ and also as the signs, which offer information, are dependent on the objects-
persons being described.

Introduction
At the onset of the twenty-first century the political lives of children are the object of practical and
scientific interest (Rothschild, 2000, pp. 1-2). In the social context, the state is regarded as an
unreliable protector. It is evident that children may have to devise strategies of survival. Children
evolve as moral beings by learning to value and care for others and in this way the nation’s politics
can impact significantly on their understandings and the way that they live their lives (Coles, 1986;
Stephens, 1995).
Any child born into a political system is like an immigrant who comes to live in it. The only
difference is that the child has not lived and been socialised in any other form of political system
... This child learns to like the government even before being able to realise what a government
is. (Easton & Dennis, 1969, p. 137)
Easton & Dennis (1969) describe how children receive and accept the political norm, especially
during their early political socialisation, which is defined by Greenberg (1973) as the procedure
through which people accept the convictions and the principles of the political system they belong
in and that determines their personal roles within it.
The first factor that influences a child in formulating a political attitude is the family. Kawata
(1986) claims that young children initially perceive their socio-political environment in a
sentimental rather than a cognitive way, and that emotionally associated socio-political experiences
are usually positive. According to Ross (1984), Bragaw (1989) and Shaheen (1989), children take on,
and carry out, shared activities within the family context. In this way, they become accustomed to
taking on responsibilities, taking initiatives and making decisions as well as participating in solving
common problems in a democratic way. Finally, other studies underline the importance of
children’s political socialisation through knowledge that is related to various aspects of political life.
For example, people in power, national symbols and international political events become evident
to them (Allen, 1989). There are four widely recognized components of civic education for
democracy: (1) civic knowledge; (2) cognitive civic skills; (3) participatory civic skills; and (4) civic
dispositions (Nordland, 1994, p. 12). The four components of education for democracy are
congruent with teaching and learning the core concepts by which we define, compare and evaluate
democratic and non-democratic governments. Effective education for citizenship in a democracy
dynamically connects the four components of civic knowledge, cognitive civic skills, participatory

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civic skills and civic dispositions. Effective teaching and learning of civic knowledge, for example,
requires that it be connected to civic skills and dispositions in various kinds of activities. The
elevation of one component over the other, such as civic knowledge over skills or vice-versa, is a
pedagogical flaw that can impede civic learning (Reardon & Nordland, 1994). Thus, teachers
should combine core content and the processes by which students develop skills and dispositions
from the pre-school age.
In the international literature, the issue of children’s political socialisation is often linked to
what is called political education and culture, which takes place both within school and in the
children’s wider social environment. Indicatively, reference is made to Osborne & Seymour (1988),
Stotsky (1990) and Cherryholme’s (1991) research, which points out the importance of political
socialisation through education. Tucker’s (1989) views are of great interest. He examines political
education in the light of interpersonal communication and participation, while Conard (1988) also
points out the importance of cooperative learning for the successful development of political
education. Elam et al (1996) have shown that Americans think that the main role of school is to
prepare responsible and active citizens. The teachers who took part in Langdon’s research (1996)
expressed the same view. A study conducted by the National Constitution Centre in the United
States has shown that 90% of citizens regard the Constitution as something very important in their
lives, although they ignore its content (National Constitution Centre, 1997). A great deal of the
responsibility for this ignorance has been put down to the fact that schools either ignore or
downgrade political issues (Morin, 1997). Leming (1992, p. 148) emphasises that curricula which
promote student independence, cooperative learning and discussion in class not only contribute to
the development of a democratic environment but also provide students with democratic models
and, at the same time, help them to alter their negative attitudes and views.
It is interesting to study young children’s views of government, civic responsibility and
politicians since it has not been extensively researched and our knowledge is limited. In a study
conducted in England, Italy, Germany and the United States (Dennis et al, 1971), an attempt was
made to estimate the change in the way 13- and 14-year-old children regarded the ‘government’ in
terms of trust and admiration. The children were divided into three age groups (8-10, 11-13 and
14-17) and were asked questions which, among other things, aimed at determining the children’s
opinion about how possible it is for the government to harm the citizens, whether or not the
government knows what is good and what is bad for the people, how frequently it makes mistakes,
and the opportunities it has to help the citizens. Conclusions drawn indicated that the most crucial
time during which political learning took place was between the ages of 11 and 13, and not
between the ages of 14 and 17. Moreover, children, from a very early age, were favourably
disposed towards the political community to a much greater degree than adults. Another important
point was that children, at least up to the age of 13, did not seem to be influenced by adults’
mistrust and cynicism towards the political community or the system of government. Children’s
early favourable feelings towards the government and the regime tended to change after the age of
12 or 13. Between the ages of 15 and 16, this favourable attitude towards the representatives of
political power was more or less the same as that of an ‘average citizen’ (Dennis et al, 1971).
In Greece both politics and politicians tend to be viewed in very personal terms;
consequently, they lose their institutional dimension and incorporate negative features that are
related to petty politics and not to politics as an institution. We could justifiably question whether
the political attitude of young people, in general, is due to either the change in the institution of
politics or to the different way in which people regard the institution of politics, or even whether it
involves both of the above. Kontogiorgis (1998) remarked, quite correctly:
What is characteristic of our times are the radical changes taking place in today’s societies within
a very short time. Institutions, social and political structures, ideologies, values and mentalities
are either regarded as out-of-date or are being re-considered or seriously contested. (p. 37)
This is a phenomenon that can be put down to the transition from an industrial to a technological
society. The latter is an intra-cosmos systemic change of a typological content, which is evidence of
the fact that there is currently a gradual transfer from a society composed of individual citizens to a
political society.
Nowadays, the fact that people keep a certain distance from politics is evidence of how unable
they feel to intervene and control the policies of a system, which, by its very nature, eludes them.

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Abstention from political actions, which is ever increasing, is a conscious political choice or political
act, and could be put down to the disillusionment people feel with contemporary politicians
(Kyridis & Tsakiridou 2004, p. 136). A typical example of this is the fact that politicians are devalued
because of the way they actually practice politics. However, in no case does this indicate that
politics should be rejected totally. Politics is considered to be a social activity not for the majority of
people but for the powerful ones (Giddens, 1998, p. 462).

Research Method and Design

This study concerns how twenty pre-school children aged five years perceived politics within the
field of cultural studies (Thwaites et al, 1994), which is a combination of history, sociology and the
social history of art (Belting et al, 1995). The methodology used is based on investigating how pre-
school-aged children expressed themselves artistically through drawing and guided intervention
based on given topics. Contemporary speculation on art supports theories about ‘reception and
perceptibility’ in the field of pre-school education as interaction between the subject and the object,
as a process of comprehension which, first of all, is based on sight (Vigopoulos, 1982; Papantoniou
& Radou, 2000). The description of external and of perceived reality at pre-school age [1] (Berger,
1972) is achieved through the understanding and the production of speech ( zouriadou, 1995), as
well as through drawing skill, and also constitutes a communicative operation. For this reason, we
consider art as a specific process, part of the general human process, and we are looking for the
common points of contact with everyday social life. The spreading of creativity throughout life
strengthens art, and the forms, which the mind creates, are the result of continuous interaction
with the forms that society creates. Art, both as a technique and as a form of expression, is an
extension of the ability to organize. The means used to organize and transfer the experience are, on
the one hand, refined and elaborated and, on the other, a continuation of the means people use to
communicate in everyday life. As far as description and analysis of the drawings are concerned, the
model of Kress & Leeuwen (1996) for visual communication is recommended. The focus is not
children’s aesthetics but their creativity and their ability to make intelligent observations: ‘children
are creative but they do not produce art’ (Fineberg, 1998, p. 55).
In this study, twenty pre-school-aged children were asked to draw Greek politicians based on
the assumption that they had relevant experiences from both school and their family environment.
The features of the children’s drawings, such as the signs, the lines, the shapes, the combinations
and colour, constitute an expressive field. Semiotics, as a method of analysis, determines how signs
are produced. It is applied to anything that could be considered a semantic substitute for something
else. The increasing use of semiotics in recent years has proved it to be a research tool for mature
artistic production – as semiotics of the images (Sonesson, 1989).
However, one of the difficulties that arises in an attempt to make a semiotic analysis of
drawing is the use of codes, as they are both aesthetic and emotional. By the term ‘code’ we mean
the ways children use line, shape and colour to express their perceptions. Aesthetic codes, at any
point in time and at any age, are formed on the basis of the ideology and culture of that era
(Llorens, 1979). Pictures, as both communicative and meaningful means, make visual
communication versatile because of the existence of aesthetic codes (Llorens, 1979) and because of
the differences between the aesthetic code of the sender and that of the recipient. Usually, painters,
but especially children, create signs without being consciously interested in the recipient’s codes
(Bessas, 1993). The dominance of the aesthetic code, which has to do with coherence and cohesion,
and the emphasis on the literal, morphological code, which expresses the use and function of the
representation, lead us to an aesthetic semiosis, which in pragmatics could be defined as a tendency
for either divergence from the social point of reference or convergence towards that point of
reference Bessas, 1993). Children’s drawings, as signs, do not convey meanings but rather produce
them (Kakissi-Panagopoulou, 1994, p. 31). So, we may try to find: (a) its reference function, (b) its
codes, (c) its schematic function, (d) its direction and (e) the social framework of the signs, or the
historical context (Kakissi-Panagopoulou, 1994, pp. 55-56). The drawings of children at this age
express more than artistic skills and emotional behaviour; they show off cultural material as well as
cognitive corpus. In this context, children drew politicians as humans who speak to an imaginary

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audience. They used a full body shape in a forward-facing direction, smiling or speaking to an
imaginary audience. Moreover, they are sketched in suits – a formal dress code.

Analysis of Drawings
In the 20 drawings collected, three semiotic fields can be discerned: the structural, the semantic and
the pragmatic. Structural analysis gives information about shapes, colours and combinations,
whereas semantic analysis looks at the meaning of the signs. In the pragmatic field, the children do
not seem to ignore the basic context of the politicians, as is revealed by the colours, forms and
combinations used. They formed the proper shapes and styles for the politicians, knowing them
through the media.
Just as grammars of language describe how words combine in clauses, sentences and texts, so
our visual grammar describes the way in which depicted politicians, places and things combine in
visual statements of greater or lesser complexity and extension. The grammar of visual design plays
a vital role in the production of meaning. We accept that grammar goes beyond formal rules of
correctness, it is a means of representing patterns of experience, it enables human beings to build a
mental picture of reality (Halliday, 1985, p. 101) and we believe that visual communication is
coming to be more crucial in the domains of public communication. Our sample belongs to
western cultures and its boundaries are not those of nation states – rather, it has spread wherever
global western culture is the dominant culture. That means that visual language is not a universal
grammar: the most obvious example comes from the western visual communication deeply
affected by our convention of writing from left to right. Such valuations exert their influence
beyond writing and inform the meanings accorded to different compositional patterns: elements
such as centre, margin, top, and bottom are used in the visual semiotics of any culture, but with
meanings and values that are different (Kress & Leeuwen, 1996, pp. 181-186).
Basic colours, such as black and blue, were used in most of the drawings. Concerning the
figures, most of the children managed to portray the politicians in the form of a human being
(Drawings 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 11), producing a ‘portrait’ (Eco, 1989, p. 298) where particular
emphasis is put on the height: tall and short politicians, such as Karamanlis-Semites, the
government and the opposition party in the Greek political scene in 2003. The imperfection in the
form (Drawings 8 and 9) depends on the child’s drawing ability as well as on the stages of
conjectural development of a child (Kakissi-Panagopoulou, 1994, p. 31). Both politicians are drawn
facing forwards (Drawings 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9), and in two cases they are put within a television-like
frame square around them (Drawings 2 and 11) (Vamvakidou et al, 2002). The features used by the
children to represent politicians are the body size, the mouth and the eyes. The body is presented as
tall and slim with raised arms (Drawings 1 and 3), the mouth is stern, unsmiling and talking
(Drawings 5 and 11), the eyes are big with glasses (Drawings 2, 3 and 7) and the hair is thin
(Drawings 2, 3, 4, 8 and 9). The use of colour is limited, with emphasis on black and blue, which are
cold colours. The figures are still, and are presented without a base and isolated in an impersonal
environment.
The majority of the figures are forceful and firmly planted on the ground. In pre-school
children’s drawing, the linear arrangement is an attempt to define the drawing space, while the
repetition of the human figures in different positions (Drawings 5, 8, 9 and 10) is regarded, in visual
grammar, as a need for recognition or offer when they are either facing or in profile ( ress &
Leeuwen, 1996, pp. 121-123).
The objects used as signs are glasses (Drawing 3), the tie (Drawing 2), the suit (Drawings 1, 3
and 4) and the horizontally open raised arms of the politicians (Drawings 1, 3, 5 and 7). Moreover, the
children’s intention to register not only the stereotypical political dress code – the suit, but also the
stern smile on the politicians’ faces – is evident (Drawings 1, 7 and 11). Concerning the position in
which the politicians are placed in the drawings, the children seem to prefer the left-hand side of
the drawing surface or in the middle of the page. In the semantics of children’s drawing, and
according to the grammar of visual design, this piece of information focuses on the ‘given’
knowledge which is presented on the left-hand side of the drawing as opposed to the ‘new’, which
is presented on the right hand-side with the main information presented in the centre ( ress &
Leeuwen, 1996, pp. 121-123). The signature or/and any other feature in the upper part of the

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drawing shows the ‘ideal’ of the composition while in the lower part of the composition, the real
elements of the combination are found. This model leads us to an analysis based on ‘the centre and
the margin’ of a picture or, in other words, its horizontal and vertical structure as observed in
children’s drawing and Byzantine art (Arnheim, 1974). This model of drawing is evident in
Drawings 1, 2 and 3.

Conclusions
On a semantic level, the drawings about politicians inform us about the stereotypes that media
produce about politicians – for example, the stereotypical political dress code – the suit – but also
the stern smile on the politicians’ faces. The diversity of shapes and colours is related to the social
and family’s environment and we can detect the common features which describe the role of
politicians – for instance, seriousness and muscularity. The pictures produced by the children are
directly related to what they were asked to draw because the degree of deduction and
representation shows an awareness of the object. The children prefer to use morphological signs
(shape, size, position, direction) in their representations. What the children recorded in their drawings
of politicians is indicative of the features of their culture: that means they paint mainly what they
have seen in their family environment and in media, which produces a visual component of
knowledge. We believe it is necessary to use visual material in teaching with the aim of
investigating how art influences children’s perceptions. The influence of television images and the
imposition of a certain culture take place from a very early age during the procedure of
socialization. The collection of a large sample from all over Greece and its quantitative analysis
within the field of comparative pictography may help to gain a fuller picture of children’s
perceptions about politicians.
We hope to open up the category of children’s representations of politicians by focusing on
aspects of the everyday in which junctures between childhood and adulthood are necessarily
implicated, integrating the experience of political life. We can engage different ways of knowing
from the plurality of children’s experience in visual writing.

Correspondence
Professor Takis Bessas, Faculty of Education, University of Western Macedonia, GR-50100 Kozani,
Greece (mpessas@uowm.gr).

Notes
[1] Sight comes before words. Children see and recognize before being able to talk. It is sight that
determines our position in the environment. We explain this world in words although it does not
alter the fact that we are surrounded by it.

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Appendix

Drawing 1.

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Drawing 2.

Drawing 3.

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Drawing 4.

Drawing 5.

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Drawing 6.

Drawing 7.

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Drawing 8.

Drawing 9.

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Drawing 10.

Drawing 11.

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