I should mention, on the topic of the thread, that I think there are stupid questions, but I don’t believe in mocking them or treating them as such. In general, there are several categories where they come from:
The aforementioned “I want to hear my own voice” people (or “the showoff”). I answer their questions (in case one of the later people on this list has the same questions but is too afraid to ask it), but these people are easy to shut up by just kindly telling them “oh dear, we’re falling behind, no more questions, okay?” or “your questions are better suited for office hours.”
The low self-esteem haver. I shamefully admit I can be this guy sometimes. Somebody who has figured something out. It may actually be a cool, almost profound observation on occasion, but nothing that needs sharing in an open forum. But they lack self esteem so they need to “check” if they have it right because otherwise they’ll self destruct because they’re used to getting feedback on every little thing and shut down without knowing they’re right in advance. These people unfortunately need to be dealt with a lot like 1. does, but nothing you do personally is ever going to “cure” them, they need to find some way themselves (or in therapy) to get the confidence they need.
Somebody who’s just having an off day. It’s okay, it happens to everyone. These people generally aren’t troublemakers and rarely repeat offenders. I answer the question, everyone moves on, they feel slightly embarrassed (and usually have a sense of humor about it).
Somebody who, through some quirk of reality, can’t solve a certain type of simple problem or don’t know some simple fact (“who’s Hitler?”). These people are the reason I try to be as nice as possible. I’ve learned long ago that it’s simply not productive to berate somebody for these errors. I’ve learned to take it as a happy opportunity to educate somebody and improve their lives, especially since they were honest enough to ask the question rather than just being okay with their ignorance. It’s just not productive and encourages people to hate asking for education and learning to berate them or call it a stupid question. I take this (XKCD link) approach, basically. I suspect these people are the ones for whom the phrase was invented.
That said, people in (4) do need help, and if they ask TOO MANY of those questions it can be bad and just as derailing as any of the others on that list, so sometimes you do have to tell them to tone it down, but I really value being able to give these people common knowledge so they know the answer in the future.
So I guess, in short, the answer is “yes, there are stupid questions.” But with the addendum, “but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth answering.”
I rarely took classes where debate was expected, but I’ve had good and bad Maths teachers and good and bad Programming teachers. The good ones were open to questions. Mind you, we also knew when to ask a question and when to wait - those professors who did invite questions would ask for them after they’d finished an explanation part, you did not interrupt; I’ve been known to tell a VIP “since the answers to the three questions you’ve asked so far were all ‘in the next slide’, may I propose that from now on you wait until the next slide comes up before asking a question?” The rest of the room looked ready to faint, he laughed and accepted the implied rebuke - and at the end of the presentation, said “well, that certainly would have been a lot of ‘next slides’” and went over the gist of it to make sure he’d gotten it correctly (he had).
Stupid questions are a lot rarer than people who fear looking stupid so much that they dare not ask a legitimate question. It’s being one of the worst problems in my current assignment: people are so afraid to put their foot in their mouth that they keep walking into lava rather than ask “how do I know which are the dangerous parts?”
It’s ridiculous. There are a lot of stupid questions, and as a teacher I think I heard them all. “Do I have to write my name on this?” when there is a sign on the wall saying “Write your name on your paper.”
“Do we have homework tonight?” when the homework is not only written on e board, but the entire week’s homework is posted on the wall. And so on.
The other statement I’ve heard educators make is that you can be anything you want. I’m 5’4" with a vertical jump of about 1". I would tell my kids that I wanted to play in the NBA and ask how many thought I would have a chance if I really, really tried. They would all just laugh, and I told them they should take these platitudes with a grain of salt.
That’s my response to that same line or to people touting positive thinking. Are you female? I am, which I don’t think either the ACB or the NBA would consider a plus.
You’re both crazy. Just make sure you’re in a position to play Kim Il-Sung to some newly developing hellhole and nobody will argue! You can be whatever you want then!
Completely agree. Those are the questions with which I have the most problems: the ones that have already been answered, IF THE ASKER HAD BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.
Nor did Socrates have a unit- or semester-long lesson plan, 149 other paying students who also may want to learn something, a set amount of class time, dedicated assignments where the student can demonstrate just how much they know by actually doing the work, or finite patience with nonstop questions like us mere mortals.
The only thing close to being as stupid as questions that were already answered are questions that only need a tiny bit of work (physical or mental) answer, but the person asking wants someone else to do the work for them.
Working in a dining hall in college, I occasionally got things like:
“How much does X cost?”
“Two dollars. All our prices are right here on this sign.”
The customer doesn’t even glance toward the sign and asks “Ok, so how much does Y cost?”
Then there’s the ever-popular: “Which is bigger? The quarter chicken or the half chicken?” for those who want to ignoring both basic math but also the fact that the half chicken costs almost twice as much.
Now now, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. Stuff like soda sees larger volume bottles selling for less than the smaller ones. Also, people could easily think quarter = 4 parts and half = 2 parts and OBVIOUSLY 4 is bigger than 2 :rolleyes: