2012 I fear asking Questions - Teacher might get angry

One of my major fears when I was younger was to raise up my finger in class and ask a question to the teacher about something that I didn't understand.

Even if I was completely clueless, didn't know which book we were reading or what page we were on, I would not raise up my hand to ask the teacher what we were doing - because I feared the teacher getting angry with me for being 'dumb' and 'not knowing' as I had seen moments and situations where a child, maybe even myself, asked a question and the teacher got angry and frustrated at them because they asked that question that was already asked a couple of times or simply because they didn't know something that for the teacher was 'completely obvious'.

So based on these experiences i 'wisely' kept my mouth shut and my hands close, to not encounter the 'wrath' of the teacher and to not have the entire class look at me like I am a leper or an alien - so obviously what would eventually happen was that I continued to 'not know' and I would eventually end up in a position wherein my 'not knowing' was revealed even more as the teacher would for instance notice that I was just sitting there, trying to peek at my neighbors and what they were doing in an attempt to try and appease my confusion - in which case she'd call out my name with a sigh, underlining that 'it's always the same with me' and 'I never pay attention' etcetera.

When the actual problem was not that I was 'confused', 'dumb', 'ignorant' or 'easily distracted' per se, it was just that I never dared to support myself in asking a question to the teacher when I didn't know something, because I simply copied the attitude of my teachers wherein it should apparently be 'obvious' that I have to know all these things - not realizing that 'Hey, I'm a kid, how would I know', the entire reason why I am there in school is to learn and grow in my understanding of this world.

But somehow, somewhere things got mixed up and I learned that I am just 'supposed to know' everything already, even if I don't. I just have to hide the fact that I feel really confused about this world and feel as though I don't know jack shit, and throw expensive words into conversations that make it seem as though I am 'very smart' and 'know a lot of stuff', 'just like the teacher' - essentially remaining stuck in perpetual ignorance about what is really going on here, because I was too afraid to ask.