However... It's been quite a while since I've been in school, but one of the things that teachers should be teaching is at least the process of determining what the best solution is to a problem.

It's entirely possible that the assignment was given to force the students to work with OO. But in that case, pick a problem that matches to an OO implementation and don't force busy work on a student just because that's what the lesson plan says.

Now, I'm not saying that there aren't equally silly constraints out in The Real World™. However, those tend to be a different set of silly constraints from school. For example, it's entirely possible (in TRW) to be told that you have to use a particular language or environment because that's what the entire organization is using (or whatever). But "Do it in OO" is rarely one of the real-world constraints. "Make it reusable" may be, but OO-ness, in and of itself, rarely is.

I'd be curious to hear back from the teacher in this instance as to why they put that set of contraints on the student / developer. That may be more instructive than anything else.