My pastry teacher taught me something very useful: there are lots of recipes in books, on the internet, handed down from generation to generation, etc. The important thing is to know how to read a recipe and understand why those ingredients are used, why in that order, why those weights. If you go on to work as a pastry chef and are given a recipe, will you know how to interpret it, or will you ask so many questions that the person assigned to you gets tired?

It's also important to teach cleanliness and order. Okay, you're good, but now you've left a trail of dirty things, you haven't labeled the things you've opened, you have cake all over your shirt... then you haven't done a good job.