The problem with this is that students don’t know what they don’t know, so how are they supposed to ask the relevant questions?
What is weird is that 4 years later my brother was in a class at the same teacher and the atmosphere was completely different, nobody was working on optional stuff, nobody was asking questions, nobody was offering to go to the blackboard and participate. It was same teacher, same school , same level of smart students. Not sure if maybe there is one ot two students that with their enthusiasm or the opposite can cause this drastic change.
is is a data point so it could be possible there is soem variable I do not know about.
Yes, but these statements are often posed as questions though.
> A teacher should try to avoid that and instead ask e.g. "what are you having trouble with?"
The student who is sufficiently lost answers “I’m having trouble with everything!” It takes some guided questions first to figure out exactly where the problem is.
Regardless of how badly lost some student may be, a question like "do you understand what I just said?" directed at the class in general, will almost always solicit zero responses other than everyone nodding and making approving noises. This is driven by social sense of the students, involving many contributing reasons, such as "I don't want my classmates to think I'm stupid", "I don't want my classmates to think I'm brown-nosing", and "my classmates will kill me if I make this lesson last any longer than necessary".
In my experience, this kind of thinking holds well into university years - it takes some years of adulthood for people to unlearn this pattern, and take responsibility for their own education.