I'll admit I didn't read all the links, but can someone share a link that shows these five guys were Catholics?

because men would never stand for being told what to do with their "little men"

Humble Thinker, I would have thought jumping in the leaves develops spatial awareness, large motor control, and excercising their legs and lungs for health. I agree, when kids get wound up, they get wound up more. And when they are calm it leads to more calmness. I don't think I would choose to entice them away from the leaves as a matter of course, as in, considering thatthe best choice every time it happened. I can see how you would, though, because, when you have them, they're at school. There's plenty of time for them to jump in the leaves when they get home.

Pen, I made up those examples as my impression of how waldorf and montessori function. I only wish I could have tried a montessori or waldorf education, I have no first hand experience. I did not know thst Waldorf teachers personally believe that fairies and gnomes are real (corporeal or spiritual?). I thought Waldorf did all that because they believed in the value of imagination. I knew they had some spiritual beliefs, like that children are souls that came here from somewhere else and the first seven years of life they're still "moving in" to their body. I read your pansy story a long time ago. I told my hubby, "they make life more magical for the kids. They tell them to plant a seed. Then at night the adults plant pansies in the cup and say, look kids. Flowers come from seeds." I thought it was beautiful. The hubby's all like, "oh. So they lie to the kids."

Okay, I looked at the links. So, if that's part of the government law right now, then universal healthcare would effectively outlaw abortion? Learn something new every day.

No, I didn't read the links yet. I typed and posted and then saw your post about Hydes law right above mine and googled to see what it was. So the fact that tricare does pay for abortions in very limited circumstances has nothing to with saying there's a law against the government paying for abortions (with a few exceptions). Not paying for a d&c after a miscarraige would be scary.

ok, unsinkable. I must have been wrong. I thought one of the pieces of this case was that plan b and iud were not secularly considered abortificants, but some churches do. So I thought that was one of the issues being decided.

It might be now. Mrs. Mungo explained in the other thread that the government can not pay for abortion, which affects military and other government employees and their families. So maybe plan b is now called an aborteficant like the Hobby Lobby said in the lawsuit it was. I wonder what this case looked like. Did they bring in a bunch of scientists to argue back and forth whether plan b is abortions, or not. Was the time there spent arguing over this? Was the time spent instead arguing if a company should be bound by laws that violate the owners belief? I want to see a reenactment on YouTube to see what they actually ended up spending time arguing about.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1824666

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/corporation-considered-artificial-person-under-law-57912.html

http://m.businessdictionary.com/definition/artificial-person.html

Well, you've said this twice. I only know because somebody told me, but yes, corporations are legally persons by the definition of the law. (1st link). Law dictionaries have two definitions for the word person, natural person, and artificial person (corporations). I thought artificial person was created as a thing back in the early 1900s, but this link says it was the 1800's. (2nd link). Sorry for posting links separately, but it's a tablet issue. Speaking of issues, it's apparently an international issue, this artificial person and what it means. (See link 3). In link it's being argued internationally if artificial persons can be guilty of genocide. States can. Many statutes apply to both artificial and natural persons unless otherwise stated (not in the link). But the point of creating a corporate entity to start with is protection, protection for the person from the business's problems, protection for the business from peronal problem, protection for the business partners. That's the corporate veil that was brought up when it was said they are piercing the corporate veil with the decision to allow a corporation to claim it's persons religion. So the point of incorporating is to create an artificial person to do business for you, because it's less risky and more money for you.

Well they don't want universal healthcare, and the doctors won't work for free market prices, you know, what people could afford to pay without insurance. If you want to keep it all private insurance and call it free market, and for some reason the insurance companies latched on to the patients employers a long time ago, then the employees and employers are going to have to get on the same page about the employees healthcare needs. Do they teach that in business school before they open their companies. I know, let's get my bank involved and get the branch manager to call my doctor about the best way to treat me according to the bank manager- you know, because every penny I spend goes through my bank too. The bank manager must have some moral obligation to make sure that money is not spent sinfully. This is ridiculous, says somebody who wouldn't even use plan B personally. What's not ridiculous is that Hobby Lobby can quit using money at all if they're worried about paying for somebody else's sinful choices, because eventually every single dollar they pay their employees will be spent on sin. It's unavoidable when handling publicly circulated money. The dollar they pay their cashier will be tipped to a waitress in a dinner, who will spend it at the grocery store on a gallon of milk. That dollar bill will keep getting played forward until it ends up spent at the liquor store, or shoved in a strippers g-string, who takes it back to the store to buy milk. All because hobby lobby paid their cashier. The only way hobby lobby can truly quit financing sin is to quit touching money. well, this was a useless rant. I'm not in the supreme court. I don't hear any officials who determine the laws talking like this. I do sometimes hear them talking about universal healthcare. Maybe that part's not irrelevant

So do Hobby Lobbys get to go to Heaven when they die?

I guess it's because kids are kids and whoever's spending their time watching them are going end up doing a lot of the same stuff. What Humble Thinker said about taking the long view and not running around putting out fires really resonated. When things aren't going as planned, you start wondering is this a healthy part of a growth spurt (physical or mental). Is this a problem that needs addressed? Was I wrong, or did I miss something when I planned this? Now our response is going to be different. My daughter asks, are fairies real? Are unicorns real? I say, do you want them to be? She says yes. I say, well I do too. Waldorf ssys unicorns live in the forest neat the beach, then puts a horn on a horse and takes the kids on a field trip to go see it. Montessori says no, now let's look at these horses, they have hooves. And these puppies have paws. And these chickens have claws. eta: and SWB says look at this stack of books that has unicorn stories and pick one and I'll read it toyou, then we'll go study history from the mideval ages and learn about the real people who once invented the unicorn and dragon stories. If you'd like we can compare the unicorn myths between the Irish, French, Chines, and African versions.

I don't know enough about montessori to know what the activities were, or what the teacher, kid, or parent did wrong. But apparently montessori is not an "anything goes" system and this didn't work out that time.

It's easy to say that Montessori offers the best of both worlds, academics taught by a play based method. It's probably a good thought experiment for you to imagine someone who, given all the information, would decide that play based daycare was better developmentally for their child, because some people do. One family I know used Montessori and it didn't work because the child was always choosing a play activity instead of a work activity. The mother did not understand the problem because if you give a child a choice it's not odd that a child would choose a play activity. The teacher apparently thought it was a problem, and couldn't fix it.

A popular choice for preschool these days is play-based daycare. Some preschools are very academic, very young. A more enlightened group of parents, usually above average parents with above average kids, have decided that kids will spend plenty enough time learning once school starts, years of learning and then work ahead of them. They are choosing strictly play-based daycares, intentionally looking for a daycare that does little to no academics. This is some of your potential customers.

Now, on one hand, you can say that Montessori fosters the child to grow independantly. That is the purpose of the program. On the other hand, it is fairly rigid in how it expects the child to grow. We expect you to choose to use these activities, and use them in just this way. That is missing the element of unstructured play from the first two examples, where the children make their own games, their own rules, and create their own solutions to their own problems. I think that might be the mismatch of ideals I can see between what you're describing and the topic of unstructured free play I've read in some of the topics mommies read and talk about.

Other popular books, such as "how to talk so your kids will listen" apply the same idea to kids in a family. The idea is that parents want to help their kids, and tell them the answer, and fix every problem, but there's something developmentally missing if the kids don't learn to work through their own problems, without expecting mom to fix every little thing.

There's a lot of talk about the importance of unsupervised play running around the parenting books, and blogs, and forums. The simpler soundbites posted on facebook reference the old days when kids were kicked outside all over the neighborhood and played unsupervised, exploring under the house, and the vacant lot, and making their own rules, own activities, own games, and working out their own problems, unless there was a real problem, then they got an adult. The saying is that there's something developmentally missing in the helecopter parent generation, and that helechoptering is the pendulum swinging back from the latchkey kids generation.

Sorry for the multi posting, but it's hard to correct typeos on a tablet, and the tablet changes some of the words that I type. It's easier to type in the notepad then cut and paste in the forum, but I can only do that a chunk at a time.

Ooh. I recognize that. I have a small set amount of schoolwork I expect him to do every school day. Sometimes he's on fire, and sometimes he isn't at all efficient.. To put it mildly. Yup, it's a total waste of a few hours some days. I guess Montessori would, I don't know do what about that, but I'm trying to teach him a routine, ya know? Just, sometimes they're into it, and sometimes they're not. I guess you have ways to urge them more "into it", by following their lead and having all the cool stuff. That would be cool to hear a plan about it. I just use zen-goggles my way through it, the "on fire" work and the waste each others time work, well either way it's work time and the quality is whatever it is for that day. I can see he's more satisfied on the good working days, but who knows if that's cause or effect or some part of a cycle, like they eat more some days than others, depending on their growth cycle.

The 90 /10 suggestion was in reply to when you asked about telling parents about Maria's idea that properly raised children are our only true hope for world peace. I just think most parents, when looking at your school, would do better to hear how you plan to help their child thrive in their development, with just a few main points of the bigger philosophies thrown in. Some parents will be interested in talking at length about the deeper truths, but, and this is not a bad thing, most parents will just want to make the best choice for their family. So I was saying when you meet the potential families youyou might want to talk more about what going to your school will be like for that individual child. Here, it's different. Here it's fine to keep talking about philosophies. I'm still not sure about the emphasis on the scientific approach. When I decided to homeschool my son the local principal said that age group is more about socializing than academics. She said that because of scientific research. I'm saying every school uses scientific research. Now the goals are different. The public school's goal is equality. Your goal is perfecting the child. I think both schools want to work toward world peace. That's why the public school tries to teach tolerance and multiculturalism and social studies and tries to give poor kids the same education and opportunities as the the rich kids. Maybe Montessori uses different scientific research. Maybe you can explain the difference. What sounds lovely to me about Montessori is that it is child led learning, at their own pace, and that it teaches them respect for work, that the child's learning is respected as real work, and that the children are taught that their work is respectful . I've still read reviews that for some families Montessori is a great fit, and it didn't work out for others. It seems to depend on boththe child and the teacher.

Ughh. ? Wish I could have given my kid a nice montessori or waldorf education, and they're exact opposites!! My three yr. old is constantly pretending scenes. She doesn't care if it's two dolls having a conversation, two fridge magnets talking to each other, or even just her toes in the air having a conversation with each other. The conversations are each unique and the charachters pretty believable. I thought she was being creative and using her imagination, not a sign she's missing out on something. Although I wish I could give my kids everything in the world, there's only so much to go around. My friend's mom died when she was a young adult, and had worked hard enough to leave her a trust fund. She has said she wished she had more time with her mother instead of her always working. Humble Thinker, this crowd is a little tougher, probably, than your intended audience of potential customers. As a tough customer I wouldn't be sold by your claim only Montessori is scientifically based, what, do all the teachers have science degrees? Even the public schools do research and development. Even their methods are designed by people with degrees and are in effect "a lab", or a running experiment. They are trying to make the world a more peaceful place by making everybody literate and trying to give disadvantaged kids more skills and more options in life. The advantages you're offering are truly more on an individual level, benefits to the family using your services. But maybe your customers would like to hear that their choice of school might contribute to world peace. I think, as a customer, familes who choose your school are comparing between local private schools, not so many will be deciding between public school, montessori, or homeschool. Every type of school advocate tells homeschoolers a lot of the same selling points I've seen you mention. Socialization, (or kids influencing other kids), structure, or doing tasks how they're told, walking in line (although walking the line is a more intense, mindful, and focused version). Actually, everything you've mentioned sounds like a more engaging, more focused, better structured version of what every other school is offering, with a more select, better trained peer group. This forum does have parents who are interested involved in their childrens education, so in a sense it almost represents market research for what your potential customers want and think, but the major difference is these are mostly homeschoolers. They spend their free time reading, comparing, and mining educational beliefs and practices. Your customers spend their time providing for their family. They want to provide a school where their children will thrive. Some of them might actually want to hear about the world peace thing. Most people want to find a place that's a "goodfit" for their kid. I would want to hear about what my kids day would usually be like. I would want to hear specifics aboutyour goals (not broad and vague like normalization), for example "this year we'll teach them concentration, following steps sequentially in order, manners, number sense, pre-reading, and pre-writing skills. These are the activities and we use these materials this way." In other words I would want to hear about what you plan to teach my kid and see what my kid would be doing with his time. If I were you I would spend 90% of the conversation talking about that and 10% talking about montessori theories, childhood theories, and world peace. You'll get some parents who perk up when you bring up the theories, and that will be your green light to talk in depth and at length about the theories because you'll see they're interested.