A lot of brouhaha about vagueness

Autumn leaves lack subtlety, but while the colors screams for attention outside, I'm stuck in my office writing "vague" on recent literature exams. I appreciate subtlety in word use and argumentation, but these responses are not subtle or understated or oblique; they're just plain vague. There's no there there.

Many questions on my literature exams don't require a specific right answer, but that doesn't mean there's no such thing as a wrong answer. Writing that the Odyssey portrays the Cyclops as an example of good hospitality demonstrates a lack of understanding of the text, as does the assertion that Inman is a war hero in Cold Mountain. But I'd rather see a student draw an inaccurate conclusion about a text than avoid drawing any conclusions at all.

My guiding rule is simple: Could the student's statement be applied indiscriminately to every work of literature ever written? If so, it's too vague. Literature means different things to different people: vague. Poets use different methods to get their point across: vague. These works are similar in some ways and different in others: vague. Music is used for many purposes in the text: vague.

These statements are salvageable; all the student has to do is provide specific examples from the texts to support broad generalizations. In fact, almost every question is accompanied by a request to support claims with specific examples from the text. What's so difficult about mentioning, for instance, the scene where Stobrod plays his violin for the dying girl and discovers that there's more to music than just hitting the right notes? 

Unless, of course, the student hasn't read the text. I would guess that 99 percent of vagueness in exam responses is a result of simple ignorance: the student hasn't read the text and so throws down a tangle of verbiage in hopes that I won't notice the absence of substance. But if I have one superpower, it's the ability to spot an absence of substance on an essay exam. I can see what's not even there, and its absence will result in a Very Bad Grade.

Fortunately, this semester I have very few students suffering from the vagueness disease. I try to nip the vagueness virus in the bud on low-stakes reading quizzes; once students see how much disaster the word vague can wreak on a 10-point quiz, they tend to work a little harder on specific examples. But a few are immune to the reading quiz vaccine--or maybe they're just immune to reading. Whatever the reason, I could definitely find use for a rubber stamp with the word vague in a big bold font.

I used to have a rubber stamp that said brouhaha (thanks to a friend who worked in a print shop), but I never found much use for it before it disappeared during one of my moves. I would get plenty of use out of a vague rubber stamp, but I would get depressed every time I saw it in my desk drawer. But imagine getting through a whole pile of exams without saying vague! That would be cause for some brouhaha.