In Defense of Ambiguity

Authors

Eugene C. Bovee, University of KansasFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

If I recall correctly, one of the first adjectives I learned as a freshman in college was ambiguous. I do not remember looking it up in any dictionary when I learned it after the first mid-term tests. It was then enough for me to learn that if a professor's test-questions were deemed "ambiguous," I could excuse my failure to answer test-questions accurately and blame the professor for having hidden from me what I should have learned and understood. In my years since, as a professor, I find that the freshmen and upper classmen and even graduate students are still sophomoric in their use of this unacademic "cop-out ".

Publication Date

March 1976

Journal Title

Iowa Science Teachers Journal

Volume

13

Issue

1

First Page

28

Last Page

32

Copyright

© Copyright 1976 by the Iowa Academy of Science

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Bovee, Eugene C. (1976) "In Defense of Ambiguity," Iowa Science Teachers Journal: Vol. 13: No. 1, Article 14.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/istj/vol13/iss1/14