Roll with the flow vs. becoming a Tiger Mother

So I am polling folks to ask...When does a sense of work ethic kick in with kids?  Does it ever, or do I need to make it happen by sheer force of will?

I ask because helping Margaret do her 2nd grade 'life cycle of the chick in the egg' project this month was definitely a test of patience for us both.  Unfortunately, this project was a team project, so Margaret settled in with her best buddy (RB) and set up some 'work dates' to try and knock out some 'research' and write up some information for the rough draft of the project.  Most work time degenerated into a giggle fest, with not much productivity and some extremely sloppy results.

I think I am hitting the limit with my patience with the whole hating homework thing after months of the same struggles.  Am I expecting too much?  Perhaps not, because I know other kids her age do more and do better.  Some don't, but some do.  But what's a gal to do to prepare her child to succeed without becoming a dreaded Tiger Mother a' la Amy Chua, and risk sending her child into years of parent-blaming therapy by having higher standards and expectations?  Shouldn't we raise the bar, allowing children to reach higher?

Love her as I do, my girl just hates homework.  If it were up to Margaret, she would Google up some generic info, pick the first thing that catches her fancy, regardless if it was relevant to the topic for the project or even from a verifiable source.  She would then gleefully copy down the information, word-for-word, until her hand got tired, then declare that her project was finished, regardless of the lack of clarity in the end result. 

There is no thought or hope of her accumulating knowledge of the subject and no inkling to block out any structure to the writing.  Just free flowing thoughts, copied verbatim, sans editing or revisions, and God Forbid I suggest a rough draft.  When left to her own devices, we are lucky to get her to use an eraser, let alone edit a thought or the structure of her sentence.  It is not unheard of for her to get a problem wrong due to poor penmanship, even when she has the correct answer!  The teacher just couldn't read it because it was so sloppy. On the flip side, I refuse to be one of those parents who does the work for the kid as that leads to failure all around.  *sigh* 

Of course, my being the daughter of a newspaper editor and life-long journalist, who spent a large chunk of her youthful dinner table conversations being edited for content and clarity, this makes me loco!  Margaret's whole goal is to get the work out of the way asap so she can get back to Barbies.  I have a vision of dearly departed my father, reassembling his ashes, just so he can roll over in his (non-existent) grave.  Sidebar:  How does one, who has been cremated, roll over in his grave?  But I digress, and you get the picture.

So I ask...Am I expecting too much of my daughter, as a end-of-year second grader, to have some semblance of work ethic and a small ability to focus on the project at hand? I am not expecting footnotes and appendices here, but complete sentences, correct spelling and punctuation would be nice.  Is it too much to expect some pride in ownership or a desire from her to produce a (comparatively) high quality, well rounded and thought-out project?  Or do I need face my inner Simonette Legree to start cracking the whip and making her do and re-do things until they are clear and well done?

Perhaps I am just a bit frustrated with the double whammy today.  Just a little put out with the girl, who continually whines and pitches a fit about being forced to go to Karate lessons (I am, after all, the meanest mommy ever!), who openly wept today when she did not get a trophy at her first ever karate tournament.  It was a bit heartbreaking to be sure, but frankly, the kids who did win were the ones who put in the effort and practiced like crazy, often attending several more practice classes than clan Otto does each week.  It was as it should be.  The kids who toughed out the extra practice, won.  How does one say to a weepy 7 year old - "girlfriend - you got to put more effort into it, to get more out of it?"  Again I say *sigh*.

These other kids who are producing better product, at such young ages, are they kids born with the ethic to try harder?  Or did their parents crack the whip?  What is the answer?