Our five-year-old, Soren, attends the local Montessori preschool for kindergarten. Her classroom is a delightful mix of about 20 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children.

At home, with just three kids, pandemonium seems to be a normative state. Despite closets, toy boxes, and floor sprawl that says the opposite, there are never enough toys to go around, never enough things for everyone to be satisfied.

Yet every time we arrive to collect Soren from school the children in the classroom are going about their business quietly, orderly, cooperatively. It's almost eerily calm.

From day one the kids are taught classroom etiquette, which focuses first on grace and courtesy. The older children are expected to help out the younger. According to their age, all the kids have "work" they are learning to mas…