No blame being assigned to to teachers but to the people who put the huge workload on them, and restrict them with regulations which if they fart the could be sued by a student (not that I know of any rules about this particular example that I use). Not wishing to have a go at teaching profession but those that decide what the curriculum should be but I think that excellent mental arithmetic, and the ability to read big words (other than on a bag of crisps), and being able to spell without a computer / mobile phone (but perhaps use a dictionary), is far better than being able to make a folder full of clippings from newspaper articles and printout from web sites look pretty and get given marks in an examination for as project work. My apology to all for having a verbal excretion here - I do not know all the answers, and I have had four cups of very strong coffee in the last hour...