An article in today’s Chicago Tribune tells a tale of a teacher who lost her job over upholding academic standards. After warning her students that they would get no credit if they didn’t do their own work on their course project, several of them plagiarized anyway. When she attempted to follow through, she was undercut by the school board. Now she’s given up, and is doing day care.

I think that this is just a continuation of the deterioration of our society’s ethical base that became so clear in the Clintonized nineties. And it’s an indictment of the school system as well–a school system that, under insane “zero tolerance” policies, will expel a child for heroically taking a knife away from someone attempting suicide, or who accidentally brings a plastic spork in his lunchbox, but has abundant tolerance for students who cheat (and who are cheating themselves, as well as their classmates).