No such thing as a stupid question

"Is Canada a continent?"
"What’s caucasian?”
“Is France french?”

These are only a few questions that I have been asked by freshmen students. Actually, three different students.

After answering the questions with a straight face, no condescension, and even, dare I say, positivity, I went home and told my friends and we all had a good laugh.

But then I became sad. Because, while these are not the students who will one day run this country (I hope), they are students that will become part of a community and a workforce.

What's disappointing is not only that they don't know the answers to these basic questions, but also the fact that they feel no shame in declaring their ignorance in front of the rest of the class.

Like any teacher, I try to make my classroom a safe space where students feel comfortable asking questions without judgement.

But this type of questioning is not an isolated phenomenon.

The first day of second semester, I had a student proudly declare that he had failed first semester because he didn't turn any work in. Other students chimed in with the low grades they earned. They weren't ashamed. They seemed to find it amusing. Some were positively boasting. I wanted to step in, and ask them if summer school was cool, if retaking the course online was cool, if the "F" on their transcript was cool.

But I didn't.

Instead, I sat, both dumbfounded and fuming that these students found this acceptable.

And I asked myself what had changed since I was in high school.

Is it the fact that this community in which I teach is rural, with many students interested in the military or immediately entering the work force rather than attending college? I admit, college was a big motivator for me in high school. Not to mention my mother. I'm not quite sure what she would have done if I'd failed even one assignment in high school, much less an entire semester.

Is it lack of parent involvement? Is it that education has become devalued in our state as teachers have become devalued? Is this our new societal norm?

Or do students simply believe that, if they show up to class, they deserve to pass a course? 

My school is a 1:1 school, which means that every student has a Chromebook to use. In many of them, I see an entitlement that accompanies this: they play games when they should be working; they have their earbuds in constantly, sometimes even when I'm teaching. Though we have a "lids closed when I'm talking" policy, they need daily reminders and sufficient wait time to follow this rule.

How are we supposed to reach students who are used to doing three things at any given time, all of them half-heartedly?

Are these stupid questions?