I hate school projects

Teaching is a hard job. I said it, teachers have to deal with paperwork, students who do not want to learn, mainstreaming of disabled and mentally handicapped children. The have lost the ability to discipline, in fact in many cases teachers are just expensive babysitters.

That said, why do they have to take out their frustrations on the kids by assigning stupid projects? These poor excuses for homework only test the parent's abilities to build and design some artistic masterpiece that Johnny signs. We then have to make arrangements to get these artworks to school so the local bully does not destroy it on the schoolbus. I am no artist, and my kids are dreamers, they conceive of the most elegant and wonderful ideas, all of which are unbuildable (at least by me). If they do not have an idea, I am lost, I am creative in many ways, just not when it comes to school projects.

Some people are visual. In the past we have built the home of the boxcar children (a boxcar) and a dwelling typical of the Eastern Woodlands Indians. I guess on some level those projects have an educational value. aside: don't they show filmstrips with pictures of this stuff anymore? A good visual would have saved us hours of gluing thin strips of bark onto a bowl to look like a wigwam. Anyway, the little one announced last night he has one more project due before school is out (9 days)-- he has to build an outhouse. That is what this project stinks of -- a bunch of shit.

Can anyone tell me the educational value in this assignment? How does this relate to an English class? Can anyone offer creative, yet simple ideas an old history major can use to build such a time-wasting, stupid, idiotic, end of school, make-work project? I hate school projects.