Hi there

Because in this game what you can see now wont be what you can see in 20 years time! Even though your looking or being asked the same thing? It does depend on the content in which you are being asked? A point scoring instrutor is no better than the novice student. If youre being tested on where you are in your training then thats ok.

Best wishes

idai

Most of the time I would say it is to impress a philosophical point. Many martial traditions don't see the instructor as the teacher in a western sense in that I tell you to do A, B, & C this way no you do it. It is more of a guide, or a pointer of the way, that helps each individual student integrate the martial concept into their own mind in there own way. Think of it like this, one of my instructors asked me what the usefulness of a cup was. After I said to hold liquid, he said, no that is a function of a cup. The usefullness is that the cup is empty to put the liquid in. The usefullness of a cup is in it s emptiness was a lesson that he used to get me to drop some of my preconcieved notions about what he was going to teach me and just be open. If my mind was full of other ideas, his could not take root, if a cup is full of water, you can not pour tea into it. So there is that sense of the philisophical journey.
Bruce Lee used to say:"Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just a punch, a kickj was just a kick. After I studied the art a punch was no longer just a punch, and a kick no longer just a kick. Now that I UNDERSTAND the art, a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick."
See, it is all about perception, and the journey to the truth, or at l;east your truth, that the instructor is imparting. Hope this helps.

As an instructor we ask question "loaded" or not to get the students to think and to know what they are thinking. After we know what they are thinking we can guide them into the right directions. We can point them in the direction that is full of resources.

It is fairly common for certain types of teachers to use questions in the way you describe.
One of the best examples on film is the movie "The Paper Chase" about Harvard Law School.
They call it the socratic method, but there is also a long tradition in the East about using questions to get students to teach themselves. Zen, mahayana buddhism, Taoism, etc. all use this method.
Since martial arts are mainly asian, it is par for the course.

Loaded questions can be a good thing if used sparingly as they can sometimes show or indicate where a student's thinking about something is and what approach they are taking with it. Used excessively, it can be a real de-motivator for students and really is a sign of a poor or weak teacher or instructor I think and maybe even an indication of an ego problem like what you allude to in your question. It certainly is not a teaching style that I enjoy interacting with and so I avoid doing it unless it is to find or try to gauge where a student is with something.

At the same time, I as their instructor also have a responsibility I think to look back at what led that student to that answer and their thinking that might have created the need for me to ask that loaded question and maybe modify my approach to teaching it with them and others. Doing that has helped me to change or modify my approach to teaching some things to my students and fighters so that they can better understand them and pick them up more easily.