Culture?

I'd have been through a generation that takes humbleness as an ideal attitude in class. What I mean by humbleness is we are supposed to listen to teachers, take notes, and go home to study hard on our own without questioning to teachers. Our goal in class is to find a short-cut to the answers that we are asked to write on tests. As a consequence, there were hardly raising-hands during class in an effort to get engaged in class activities that encourage us to think in our own ways. Speaking of giving credits for bringing up some ideas in class, we don't care what we are thinking of the contents, what we care is either what the answers are, or what our professors think of. In other words, I have been trained only in pursuit of getting right answers, neither my thoughts nor peers'. Since I am so used to this more or less passive way of learning, it was so painful for me to have to come up with my thoughts in class. In most cases, I am assigned to a group activity that requires me to say something. However, I end up remaining, most of time, in silence rather than contributing my ideas to my group. I am not good at returning so quickly with ideas as soon as a question is presented in class. More individual/private time is necessarily needed for me to be confident with ideas. In addition, there might be a different perspective toward talking attitude in class between in Korea and in the U.S. We do not like talking much in class because of the judgment that talking much is considered to be big talkers or windbags. We are, therefore, prudent with bringing in ideas to class, which might seem awkward or indifferent to the American professors.