I attended German, Hungarian and US schools in K-12. In my experience, the US system is the weakest form of education and all the touchy-feely liberalism just results in a crappy education. I knew guys who were taking some idiot version of algebra in 11th grade, homework was doing multiplication on a calculator?
No, I do want my students to talk. Please do not tell me what I think. I want my students to move from being bumps on a log to engaging in the subject, ie, becoming fluent in it.
Also, I hold the expectation that mere facts are dealt with out of the classroom - class is about moving into interpretation and analysis, which does not always have obvious solutions.
I guess I tend to have the opposite view, that the European systems tend to focus on drilling facts and highly regimented exam- and track-based advancement structures, while the U.S. system produces more creative students and more flexibility (and more entrepreneurs and inventions). But then neither of us are citing data. =]
edit: Though I suppose "European" probably needs to be further qualified, because my understanding is that the Scandinavian systems are in many ways even more liberal than the American one, with a strong emphasis on students' autonomy to co-direct their own education.
However, it's still not that difficult to grade for "well-done" work in subjective areas.
Whether the thesis of a literary analysis paper is "correct" may be opinion, for example, but it's definitely possible to grade fairly based on a rubric of "did the student defend their thesis in a clear, organized manner, properly using appropriate citations from the text" (after filtering out theses that are completely inane or insane).
I was a TA for several years as a grad student, and was the sole instructor for an introductory programming class. I constantly asked my class questions - I did not want them to be silent. If your just march on through material without getting feedback from the class, you have no idea if anything is sticking.
Btw. I agree with the OP.