See how death comes to the wise as to the foolish
In
some circles it is fashionable to say that "there are no stupid
questions", especially when teaching a class. I kind of understand the
purpose of saying this, but I still disagree with it. Not only do
stupid questions exist, there are questions so stupid that after they
have been said and are lingering in the air, one feels too ashamed to
even be in the same room.
What exactly makes a question stupid? Not the fact that the questions establishes ignorance and essentially zero-knowledge status of the person asking it, since normally when teaching we assume that the student doesn't know the topic that is being taught. A stupid question is a bit like pornography, so that it is hard to define but you know it when you see it. Later I fortunately came up with a simple definition for a stupid question: a question is stupid if it establishes that the person asking it is socially, intellectually or knowledgewise far below the level in whose context the question was asked. Of course, stupid questions can be immensely useful in the sense that they establish the futility of even trying to further educate that person.
The opposite of a stupid question is an intelligent question. What makes a question intelligent? An intelligent question establishes that the person asking it has understood what was taught before and can draw conclusions from it, but the question is necessary for making further conclusions for the reason that these conclusions do not logically follow from what was taught so far.
What exactly makes a question stupid? Not the fact that the questions establishes ignorance and essentially zero-knowledge status of the person asking it, since normally when teaching we assume that the student doesn't know the topic that is being taught. A stupid question is a bit like pornography, so that it is hard to define but you know it when you see it. Later I fortunately came up with a simple definition for a stupid question: a question is stupid if it establishes that the person asking it is socially, intellectually or knowledgewise far below the level in whose context the question was asked. Of course, stupid questions can be immensely useful in the sense that they establish the futility of even trying to further educate that person.
The opposite of a stupid question is an intelligent question. What makes a question intelligent? An intelligent question establishes that the person asking it has understood what was taught before and can draw conclusions from it, but the question is necessary for making further conclusions for the reason that these conclusions do not logically follow from what was taught so far.
In my cicles the saying goes "There is no stupid questions, there is only stupid people"
Posted by Peter | 1:56 PM