when i was in the 5th grade (give or take a couple years), there was an innovation project where we were to bring in and present to the class an invention.

i remember a girl inventing what i now know to be a "flexible weighted dip tube" – think of it as a shampoo bottle that you can pump upside down – and was amazed.

like this submission, the flexible straw wasn't really invented by the student. at best it was independently discovered, but this patent was from at least twenty five years before: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3547296A/en

to that end, i wonder what the point of presenting these inventions as your own are – especially in the time of the internet when prior art is so easily discovered. or, did i miss the point?