I did a CPL/IR/ME course in the States. The School has no facilities for briefing (no briefing rooms / whiteboards / whatever). When I attempted to get the instructors to brief me before the flight by asking a series of structured questions about what we were going to do they were clearly out of their depth and had no idea how to deal with it. Many of them had also taught at other schools so it wasn't just this one .....
The expectation was that you would just fly - with the instructor yelling at you whilst 90% of your attention was on flying the aircraft and only 10% on what the instructor was saying ......
As an instructor on other aircraft classes in the UK I found the whole experience a useful exercise in how not to teach!
I'm sure there are schools in the US who brief in the way that we are used to in the UK, but from what I've heard and experienced I'm not convinced it is the norm.
Again, from my experience the "1hr lesson" is a far from universal concept. In the US I've seen ab-initio students on sorties lasting 3 to 4 hours.