menu system is so bad

If you really need the active state based on content type you could write your own hard coded menu block, eg :

<li><a href="/forum" <?php if ($node->type == 'forum') { ?>class="active"<?php } ?>>forum</a></li>

Hydrant Ltd
www.hydrant.co.uk

Have you tried using the secondary links. You might try the following, for your primary links menu (prospectus, forums, blogs) add about us, aims, curriculum children of prospectus.

Now under Administer › Site building › Menus › Settings (a tab), set 'Source for the secondary links' to the same menu value as 'Source for the secondary links'.

Now under Administer › Site building › Blocks enable (place in a region) the 'Secondary links' block.

Drupal is perfectly capable of doing what you want--I do it on virtually every site I build with Drupal. Essentially you need to create structure within your site that goes beyond the inherent node and taxonomy system. Here's what I do:
For the purposes of discussion we'll discuss your prospectus section:
Create taxonomy vocabularies and terms. Vocabulary: prospectus; terms about us, aims, curriculum. For the vocabulary make sure you dont select Multiple select
Add terms to your nodes.
Create a view "prospectus" and assign Filters for Vocabulary term (prospectus) and Taxonomy Term (leave blank); add arguments for Taxonomy term and Node title; you'll also want to add view argument code so that when a node title is passed the view switches from 'teaser' to 'node' view.
Now, create a .tpl.php file for the name of the view you just created: maybe something like this: node-view-prospectus.tpl.php. Open node.tpl.php and copy everything from that file into your new .tpl.php file.

You'll need to add some code to find what terms are assigned to the node. I usually add a function to my template.php file that goes something like this:

function mythemename_nodeterms($node) {
	$vocabularies = taxonomy_get_vocabularies();
	foreach($vocabularies as $vocabulary) {
		if ($vocabularies) {
			$terms = taxonomy_node_get_terms_by_vocabulary($node, $vocabulary->vid);
			if ($terms) {
				foreach ($terms as $term) {
					$termid = $term->tid;
					$vocabid = $term->vid;
					$keyword = $term->name;
					$termlinks[] = $keyword;
				}
			}
		}
	}
	return $termlinks;
}

Back in your node-view-prospectus.tpl.php file add this to the top of the file:

	$categories = mythemename_nodeterms($node);
	$category = $categories[0];

Next, comment out the part that links the title to the node and replace it with something like this:

<h3 class="title">
<a href="<?php print '/prospectus/' . $category . '/' . $title; ?>"><?php print $title?></a>
</h3>

That's the bare essentials--good luck
pp

There seems to be a module providing a neat solution for stuff like this:
http://drupal.org/project/menutrails

...but i've another menu-related question:
Is it possible, to set up primary links to dynamic sections ( respectively with parameters, like users/ ) using the standard menu system?
I've learned, that "/user" is an alias pointing to "My Account" which is actually doing the job - but unfortunately the active-trail isn't maintained causing the "My Account" link not to be highlighted when visiting /user and subsequent sections ...
Besides there are many situations, that could require context-sensitive menu items, like pointing to individual stuff of the user currently logged in...

In default navigation menu, these types of items are some kind of hardcoded and cannot be changed. Is there a way to get these things into a primary menu while keeping the active trail?

It is truly bewildering that drupal is so poor out of the box at creating a site heirarchy as is standard on the web, at least as far as non-programmers go(some of this can probably be explained by the attitudes above >:|). However, the need is recognized by some and solutions like the context module are available. It will allow for proper menu highlighting. It's what I'm using to define sections on my site.

http://drupal.org/project/context

good luck.

Lots of good discussion and help being offered in this thread.

I have bumped into similar issues in the past. What I have come to realize is that drupal in general, and lots of its developers, don't think of web sites in terms of a typical "Section" paradigm that some of us coming from other backgrounds with other expectations have been groomed think in. A typical Drupal site is a pool of nodes of different types and views of those nodes more or less.

One method I have used in the past to build a site with a basic understanding of "sections" is to use the Path Auto module to give my different content types different paths. I can then use different content types as sections. Then figure out what section I am in by examining the path and act accordingly. This probably doesn't solve your problem, but it's one idea to think about.

You can see it at http://cacanational.hddigitalworks.com/, check under the "About Us" tab, choose a child menu item (it goes two levels deep), the active path lights up from the parent to the active child item. The hightlight is based on the link's uri so if you have two different item pointing to the same, both will light up. You don't have to do anything to your content, just make up the menu however you like, use nice_menus to display the menu and the highlighting just happen.

nice_menus out of the box is not capable of doing this. I have to override its themeing to make this happen.

Here is the code, if you want to use this, put this in your theme's template.php:

/**
 * Matthew's Mod
 *
 * Override nice_menus' version to add class="active" to every <li> tag  and <a> that's part
 * of the active trail.
 */
function phptemplate_nice_menu_build($menu) {
  $output = '';  

  foreach ($menu as $menu_item) {
    $mlid = $menu_item['link']['mlid'];
    // Check to see if it is a visible menu item.
    if ($menu_item['link']['hidden'] == 0) {
      $active_class_marker = _foliage_menu_item_is_active($menu_item) ? ' active ' : '';
      
      
      // Build class name based on menu path 
      // e.g. to give each menu item individual style.
      // Strip funny symbols.
      $clean_path = str_replace(array('http://', '<', '>', '&', '=', '?', ':'), '', $menu_item['link']['href']);
      // Convert slashes to dashes.
      $clean_path = str_replace('/', '-', $clean_path);
      $path_class = 'menu-path-'. $clean_path;
      // If it has children build a nice little tree under it.
      if ((!empty($menu_item['link']['has_children'])) && (!empty($menu_item['below']))) {
        // Keep passing children into the function 'til we get them all.
        $children = theme('nice_menu_build', $menu_item['below']);
        // Set the class to parent only of children are displayed.
        $parent_class = $children ? 'menuparent ' : '';
        $output .= '<li id="menu-'. $mlid .'" class="'. $parent_class . $path_class . $active_class_marker .'">'. theme('menu_item_link', $menu_item['link']);       
        // Build the child UL only if children are displayed for the user.
        if ($children) {
          $output .= '<ul>';
          $output .= $children;                     
          $output .= "</ul>\n";
        }
        $output .= "</li>\n";
      }
      else {
        $output .= '<li id="menu-'. $mlid .'" class="'. $path_class . $active_class_marker .'">'. theme('menu_item_link', $menu_item['link']) .'</li>'."\n";
      }
    }
  }
  return $output;
}


/**
 * Is this $menu_item active? It's if its href or any of its children's href match
 * the current request uri.
 */
function _foliage_menu_item_is_active(&$menu_item) {
  $path = $menu_item['link']['href'];

  if ($path == $_GET['q'] || ($path == '<front>' && drupal_is_front_page())) {
    return TRUE;
  }
  // Recursively look deeper into the children to see if we have any match
  if ((!empty($menu_item['link']['has_children'])) && (!empty($menu_item['below']))) {
    foreach ($menu_item['below'] as $child) {
      if (_foliage_menu_item_is_active($child)) {
	      // fix up this menu_item to make theme_menu_link() realize this is an active menu
		    $menu_item['link']['localized_options']['attributes']['class'] = 'active';
	      return TRUE;
	    }
	  }
  }

  return FALSE;
}

In my rummaging around D.O. today I found this module which I believe solves the problem in the original post.
Menu Trails can be found here --> http://drupal.org/project/menutrails