- “Dumb questions”…
Remember, when your elementary school teachers told you “there are no dumb questions”? Well there can definitely be “dumbness” involved, but it’s not the question, it’s the asker. In essence, any question asked without first contemplating the possible answers is, well, dumb.
ANY and ALL questions are valuable and worth contemplating, in fact, people don’t ask enough questions!
But when they do, their questions often suck.
They don’t ask the right questions to give them the answers they seek.
They ask general questions hoping for specific answers.
At best, the quality of the answer will be proportional to the quality of the question.
It’s smart for a student to ask for help in formulating his/her question, because if you are lost you may not even know what question to ask.
Many times people ask questions to which the answer would be obvious if they had just looked around.
A former business partner said that while in the Navy his CO barked, “Don’t come into my office with a question unless you have already come up with at least three possible answers! Now get out of my office!”
That’s all I’m asking for… at least attempt to consider the possibilities before asking another person. At least try to improve your skills in problem solving and deductive reasoning. Those are minimum requirements for any professional worth hiring. And it starts with taking responsibility.
Now back to the context of elementary school. It is in fact ideal to entertain all questions, but not just for an answer (unless the question is “may I go the restroom?” or “where is the restroom?”). The question should be used as a chance for a teacher to help the student come up with a list of options, and then to step by step consider the viability of each.
2. A teacher said, “never answer a question with a question.” This teacher was either idiotic or tyrannical.
In many cases the BEST answer is a question! A question to further identify the specifics or to clarify context. In fact without clarity of context, no question can be correctly answered. Only math is free of context.