I was outraged to read a column which appeared in the Ottawa Citizen in May. Its author, Randall Denley, explains that the Ottawa public school board has decided to permit students to plagiarize in their assignments, and to allow work to be turned in late or even never without penalty. What could those people be thinking of?

With all the world at their fingertips, students can easily copy paragraphs, pages or entire documents and turn them in as their own work. This is really terrible, primarily because the student hasn't learned anything by doing his or her own research, but also because the real author of the work gets no credit. To maintain integrity, ideas or material taken from someone else's work should be brief, and should be acknowledged by a footnote. Apparently the Ottawa school board members don't know that, or don't care.

Damian Cooper, the educational consultant who was hired to work on the school board's policy apparently said that school isn't the real world, so injecting the all-too-real element of failure isn't appropriate. Pardon me, but school and learning from failure are very important parts of the real world. Our education system is responsible for training children and young people so that they can go out into business, industry or whatever career they choose and succeed instead of wallowing. Failing is often a great motivator for learning. Kids shouldn't be deprived of that opportunity.

I recently heard of a high school teacher who said he didn't pay attention to a student's grammar or punctuation in assignments. "As long as they seem to have grasped the basics of the topic, I pass them." Is just "grasping the basics" enough to turn out a student who is set to win in life?

Olympic athletes don't win a medal by goofing off during training. They succeed by working very hard at their sport, right up to the finish line. Succeeding out in the world is exactly the same. We are short-changing our young people when we allow school administrators to make weak policies.