"There is no such thing as a stupid question."

My high school history teacher once responded to a question thusly: “There are no stupid questions, but if there were, that would be one”.

Oh, if only this could be used, verbatim, with my dear beloved teenagers.

Depends on the question, really.

I am of the opinion (or was, when I was in school), that I’m paying for my education and if I don’t understand something I am damn well going to ask a question. I try to be involved in a class and not just sit there with a dumb look on my face. If I think the professor is wrong, well, he may have had a brain fart, he may have had a typo, or maybe I misunderstood something fundamental.

But I also know when to shut up. If I am clearly lost, I check the book first or go to office hours. If the professor says he has a lot to go through and please save questions, I save questions until after class. If I’ve asked 3-4 questions in a row, I shut up and let other people talk (after all, they are paying for an education too).

I had a grad class that had a final project, as many do. When the professor handed out the project requirements, in big bold letters at the top was “page length MUST be between 15-25 pages. No more, no less”. The prof made a big deal out of problems she’d had in the past, and how she doesn’t like page limits but experience has taught her they are necessary. It was in big red letters on the course website. She commented on it several times throughout the semester.

The class before the paper was due, some guy that had skipped 80% of the classes showed up and asked if there was a page count requirement. The professor flat out said “I have answered that several times and you are wasting the time of the other students in the class. Please leave”. The rest of us would have applauded but she was obviously not in the mood.

An honest question you have after keeping up with the material? Never a problem. A question after blatantly not doing the work? You’re wasting everyone else’s time. Arguing with the professor about trivia while the rest of us want to learn? You’re wasting our time and we all wish the professor would kick that kid out.

There is a time for and type of questions that are OK. There are also times and types of question that are not OK. If you have never experienced the latter consider yourself lucky.

Furthermore, the lecture hall is not usually the place for in-depth discussion of the salient points of the lecture. The professor has a set amount of material to get through, in a limited time span, and there is usually only so much time allotted for questioning. If any. If you want to get into the nuts-and-bolts nitty-gritty “let’s talk about this in depth from all possible angles,” you need to go to the discussion sections of your class (mandated for some liberal arts classes), join a study group, or attend the professor’s office hours. But don’t mess with everyone else’s lecture to satisfy your own hunger for question-and-answer period.

That is also why professors have office hours and TAs. Asking for a clarification is one thing. If it is more than that you are better off asking outside of class. Taking up valuable class time from everyone else is often just narcissism.

+1

Damn it I was writing my reply and didn’t see this. :smiley:

Yes. and +1 to yellowjacketcoder’s response too. We are all paying for an education not for you to discuss every niggling little detail on what professors are saying.

And yes, don’t ever ask questions that are already answered in the syllabus. It just shows you to be ignorant and lazy because you have obviously not read it. :rolleyes:

Or lack of social skills. :wink:

There is such a thing as a stupid question, but it is generally better to ask one than to be stupid in silence. However, I have learned the hard way that students do not respond well to this statement, so … “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” it is.

So, what if you have an indepth question because you want to explore every salient point of the lecture? Is it okay to bring it up in class every 5 minutes? :smiley:

Anonymous User, here’s a hint. When you ask your first question, don’t worry about it. Second, even. When you raise your hand to ask your *third *question in the same class period, look around you. Are the other students avoiding eye contact with you? Are they glaring at you? Are the heads beginning to slam into desks as people heave great sighs of frustration? If so, you’re probably either asking stupid questions, or you’re asking questions which are so brilliant that they’re wasted on the plebeians in your class, and you should bring them up privately with the teacher another time.

I have a recent non school related one.

For various reason I had a bucket that was filled with bagged dog shit and garbage that needed to be dealt with. Disposed of said bagged material. Then I started to fill the bucket with water to rinse out the bucket.

At that point the SO see’s me filling the bucket and asks something to the effect of “are you filling that bucket full of dog shit and garbage with water??!!!”

I said something rather abrubt and rude in return. Only because she was being mad and accusatory when she asked.

Why yes, I decided to make a dog shit and garbage stew right here and now :rolleyes:

As Bill Engvall would say, “Here’s Your Sign”

Sorry, other people are there to learn too and they’re not getting much of an education (you know, the one they’ll need to pass exams) by the professor letting this guy monopolize class. Jerk move on the one student’s part.

And the emphasis should be on the fact that the guy kept asking a question every five minutes. Totally unacceptable. There are other people there besides just you.

The flip side to some of this, and what I see often prompts the “no stupid questions” comment is that questions can be valuable feedback to a lecturer on pacing and depth. Does a silent bunch of students mean they’re eating it up or completely lost? Repeated tangential questions by the same individual are annoying, but a question of “I don’t understand this basic concept” is usually met by the other students with nods of agreement or roll eyes and sighs. If many people are missing some basic idea, it is probably worth the class’s time to revisit it.

At week long annual course I’m part of, we solve the tangential question problem with a “question box.” Interesting questions from the box are then answered at the end of the day when there’s a few minutes to spend on them. That gives the lecturer the easy out of telling people “put it in the box” when the question is not stupid, but is not on point with the lecture, or would require more time than available. At this same course, we’ve also pulled aside extroverted students and asked them to ask questions. That happens when people seem lost, but nobody is willing to speak up. It seems like somebody breaking the ice on asking questions can get things started. Often times a few brief questions can clear up confusion among many students.

I’m a firm believer in there being few stupid questions.

I frequently tell people not to feel bad that they can’t find the bread or peanut butter and that I get asked that all the time.

And if people ask me if we carry X, I assure them that are selection is broad and eclectic enough that no, we don’t carry X (even though we carry related product Y) and that asking is perfectly reasonable.

And I try not to laugh at people when they ask me where something is and the answer is that they were standing right in front of it.

That said, yes, I’ve been asked stupid questions.

Recently, someone asked me if the crockpots we sell are sturdier than the ones Wal-Mart sells. Um, I think they are identical–made in the same factories, shipped to similar distributions centers, then to the stores.

I don’t like being asked where to shop for stuff we don’t carry–I often don’t have any ideas, because it isn’t a product I’ve needed to buy. But that doesn’t make the question stupid, just annoying.

And like others in this thread, I’ve been in situations where when a particular student opened his or her mouth, everyone else thought at him/her “shut up”–because that person is dominating the conversation, mostly, with a side of many questions are better handled by reading the syllabus.

Or maybe it wasn’t one student–it was several, possibly because they couldn’t hear the instructor clearly enough, or because they were picking a different nit. Again, annoying, not necessarily stupid.

I had a grad school professor who wouldn’t answer stupid questions–he defined stupid questions as those prefaced with "I know this is a stupid question but . . . " If you left off that description, he’d answer anything but computer problems–those were better taken to the TA.

What about this one?

“Gosh, you know a lot. How come you didn’t graduate cum laude from college?”

I +1 this too. I was more like Anonymous User in middle school, but I eventually learned when to ask questions and when to shut up (and when they’re appropriate for during class, after class, or during office hours).

Now, obviously the specifics depend heavily on the teacher and the class. Whenever I’ve prepared and written a lecture, my classes are heavily interactive and as long as nobody is monopolizing the conversation I’m fine with eager people (even then I don’t hold it against them, it can be easy to get eager in a class of that format without realizing it). Philosophy classes especially are discussion based rather than lecture based for the most part.

Having TAd and taught seminars, I can say that the other side of the aisle is hard to balance too. My initial problem with TAing was that I deferred EVERYTHING to the class – part of it is generally that when you’re qualified to teach something, you’re one of those people who are good in the field (at the college level, I mean), so you don’t find the material “that hard” and don’t realize you’re slowing down your class for no benefit. It took me a long time and a lot of experience to really work out when it’s acceptable to make the class answer a question or provide commentary, discussion, or feedback, and when it’s appropriate to just tell them something.

Believe me, giving your class the underlying properties of something and trying to get them to arrive at the answer themselves SOUNDS like a great idea at first (even if when you were taking the lecture you figured it out that way before the instructor got there), but you will never cover any amount of material ever if you do it all the time, and many of your students will probably be frustrated and feel dumb. That’s best left for an occasional in-class project, not a standard lecture tool.

(my bold)

So you admit that it is part of why you hog up class time?