To cover for my lack of recent entries, here's an amusing picture.
 

I was having one of my imaginary conversations with myself earlier when I suddenly realized "Hey! This thing I'm talking about? This is, like, one of those things I've been putting off writing a blog entry for. You know, an idea."

Anyway, what I was talking about was the phrase "There are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers." This is a policy adopted by teachers in the hopes that if they can convince students (such as myself) that there are no stupid questions, we won't be afraid of asking them. The only problem with this technique is that it is a blatant lie.

There is absolutely such a thing as a stupid question. Also, the customer is not always right, and hair won't grow on your palms whether you keep bopping your bologna or not.

A stupid question is a request for insight that ends up inadvertantly revealing the true depth of your ignorance on the subject at hand. The most revealing such question I've ever heard was uttered in my ninth grade Geography class by a Canadian who had lived here all of her life: "Wait, Canada's in North America?" It was then necessary to explain to her that North America is a continent. Not the top half of the United States.

That one perhaps being a rare exception, stupid questions do not necessarily infer that the person is actually stupid. I've asked many stupid questions of my own over the years, and I like to think that my cerebrum is a pretty foxy piece of brain matter. Incidentally, this is related to one of my core philosophies of life: Everyone's a little bit stupid. But that's only tangentially related to my point.

... My point being that all this "no stupid questions" nonsense isn't just hokum, but also counter-productive. When a child is convinced that a monster lives in his closet, you don't try to tell him that monsters don't exist. He won`t buy that. You get in there and you murder that thing. You tell him what a big sissy that monster really was, and how it cried like a baby whilst you stomped it into oblivion. Admittedly, this analogy is not perfect, as monsters really don't exist, and you really should pick less graphic imagery in the event of an actual parental situation, but... I've lost my train of thought.

Right. Stupid questions. The problem, you teachers, is that we students know full well that stupid questions exist, because we hear them all the time from other students. I don't know exactly who you're trying to fool. But you know what? Stupid questions are okay. Not just okay, they're necessary. An important part of learning is putting away fear of embarassment and being willing to look like a fucking idiot in the interim so you'll look less like one in the future. Just tell us that. Then all we need from you is patience, clarity, and your remarkable ability to not laugh your ass off when someone asks you why the people in Australia don't fall off.

Just don't claim that things we can clearly see don't exist, no matter how pithy your phrasing is.