Why can't I print from my ipad?

Question

I've had my iPad for almost a year now and I like it a lot. It looks very good, it performs very well even though I'm far from reaching my goal of only taking my ipad to school, nothing else.
One important reason why this won't be the case for quite a while still is that I can't print from the iPad.
Let me explain. I make quite a number of worksheets. Being a teacher this is one of the things you do so that the students have something to write on and do exercises. Over the years there have been many of these and my initial thought was to put them all on the iPad and print them when needed. But imagine my surprise when I found out that printing from an iPad seems to be near impossible.
Other colleagues of mine got themselves cheap EEPCs and they work fine. They can access the local printer easily printing whatever they wish. But I can't do that! Unless my school buys a new Air-thingy printer from HP I just won't print there! And that just *****.
I've bought a sleek and expensive machine that is so sophisticated - that I can't use it the way I want to. And that isn't even ******** about the file system that seems to be equally messed up.
My question is, why can't I print from the iPad? Printing had been announced many times before the launch of iOS 4 and then, all of a sudden, nothing more. How can this be? Why do I have to buy additional software - which is not really cheap and far from certain to work at all - just to be able to print a few pages?
Please help me understand this, as I see it, major flaw of the iPad and iOS 5.

Answer 1

Thanks guys,
I seem to have understood by now.
To sum it up:
- I can print with the iPad directly if the printer is Airprint compatible.
- I can print via a number of more or less working apps.
I've downloaded some HP software for my iPad and even seem to be able to access it from some other apps, that is except Apples Pages app. Sigh! So whenever I have to make changes in my documents, I still can't print.
GoodReader on the other hand lets me send my documents to the HP app, but the app/HP won't let me print microsoft docs unless I register and send my documents over to HP where the printing prep is being made, then they send it back to me/my printer. Anyway GoodReader blows my layout apart, so I must change it on the iPad, but when I do …
It's a big catch.
You must realize that printing really isn't that comfortable and that as a spoiled old Mac user I might be excused for wishing something more workable.
The truth seems to be that I've got to carry all those docs on a USB-stick, move them over to the Windows-machine at our school and print from there - which is what I do on a daily basis already.
All those workarounds that may or may not work (check out user comments on those printing apps!) are so annoying that my overall question remains pretty much the same.
But I could also rephrase the question: Why can't I print from the so-called best tablet office app even if I am equipped with all the apps I apparently need?
Please understand that this is not Apple-bashing in any way. This is a real problem for me in my everyday life. I won't be persuading my school to buy AirPrint printers just because of my little problem and I honestly don't want to spend more money on printing apps that seem never to even have gone through beta testing.
Still, thanks for you efforts. I guess I'll just have to wait for Microsoft Office for iPad to get that big problem solved.