Likewise, in the question, If a man starts to walk around a squirrel which is clinging to the limb of a tree, and if, as the man circles the tree, the squirrel also circles the tree so that he constantly faces the man, when the man has gone completely around the tree, has he gone around the squirrel? Here the indefiniteness lies in the meaning of to "go around." With this indefiniteness remedied, there is no longer any possibility of difference of opinion.
Indefiniteness may come from the use of certain words that from their very nature are indefinite in meaning. Such are the verbs _be_, _do_, _have_, _become_, _happen_, and the prepositions _of_ and _about_. Examples of indefiniteness growing out of such colorless words are found in the following questions, which are types of many asked in our schools daily:--
What does water _do_ when heated? (Expands, evaporates, boils.)
What _happens_ when it lightnings? (Thunder, discharge of electricity, flash.)
What must immigrants coming into this country _have_? (Money, freedom from disease, character.)
What did Arnold _become_? (A traitor, a British general, an outcast, a repentant man.)
What _is_ the cow? (A mammal, a quadruped, a producer of milk, butter, and beef; an herbivorous animal.)
What _about_ the Monroe Doctrine? (A dozen different things.)
What _of_ the animals in the temperate zone?
Questions may be so general as to be indefinite. The teacher asks, "Where is Chicago?" The class may answer, "In Illinois on Lake Michigan; in North America; in Cook County." The teacher should know just what answer he desires, and then ask, "In what State; on what continent; on what lake; or in what county?"
Other illustrations of vagueness coming from the use of words of too general a meaning are found in such questions as, What _kind_ of man was George Washington?
All indefinite questions deserve and usually receive an indefinite answer, and hence lead to and encourage guessing. If the answers to such questions as the above are not indefinite, they must be purely memoriter, merely reproducing the words of the text without comprehension of any real meaning.
Indefinite questioning usually comes from a lack of clear thinking on the part of the questioner. The teacher himself does not know precisely what he means to ask, and hence cannot be definite. It is safe to say that the teacher's questions covering a subject will never be any more clear or definite than the subject itself is in his mind. Indeed it is hard for one to be wholly definite in questioning even when he is a perfect master of his subject. Certainly, then, eternal vigilance will be the price of clearness and definiteness on the part of the young teacher who is as yet striving for mastery of what he is teaching.