I’ve heard pretty much my whole life that there’s no such thing as a dumb question. I remember in grade school one of my teachers always telling us that the only dumb question is the one that goes unasked.
When I hear someone say that, my initial reaction is that that’s absolutely false — there are dumb questions, and people are out there asking them on a regular basis. The world is full of stupid people and they say stupid things. Now here’s the disclaimer — like just about everything on this blog, this is just from my perspective, my opinion. But here’s the thing — no one person (not even me) gets to be the judge and jury about stupid or dumb questions. What may be a dumb question to me could be fascinating or interesting to someone else.
I have to admit that some seemingly dumb questions may be asked deliberately just for the purpose of testing someone’s reaction or opinion on the subject of discussion. And I have to admit that sometimes when a stupid question is asked, the person asking it may seem stupid at first but in the end, they’re learning something new.
Carl Sagan once wrote that there are monotonous questions, naive questions, tedious questions and ill-phrased questions, but every question is a cry to understand the world. That sounds kind of nice — a little like Mark Twain’s quote, “He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to become more tolerant of dumb questions, among other things. But I haven’t been very successful… I’ve come so far as to admit that there may not be such a thing as a dumb question, but there is such a thing as a dumb person asking a question.
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