How would my children do in public school?

I am not sure that I could really determine how my children would do in public school without actually putting them in public school but something happened this morning that made me wonder.

The boys love to do spelling bees, so we had been doing them for awhile and having some fun. Spelling is not something they struggle with, so it was never a challenge but just for fun. So, I decided last week to doing spelling tests with them. You may ask why I would do that if they can spell just fine. Well, as with most boys, they HATE writing, and in particular writing neatly. So, I thought I would use something fun to help them practice their writing. So, I gave them a list on Monday and asked the to copy it. Michael and Joshua have the same list because I figured they could handle it. Jacob and I worked on writing his letters correctly (I love it when I get what I want out of things).

Then, today we had a 'pretest' with the promise that any words they got correct would not be on the 'test' on Thursday. So, I read out words and they wrote them. I warned them that if they didn't write neatly the words would be marked wrong. And well, it worked, they wrote neater than I have ever seen them write! But then something interesting happened. Joshua missed one word. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to tell Joshua he was wrong but it never goes well. He usually yells at you and tells you that you are wrong. I finally let him redo the word and guess what, it was still wrong. He was so mad at me. So, to you and me this is no big deal, you just learn the word and do it right on Thursday, but it took about 5 minutes to convince him that it would be ok. I just have to wonder what public school would look like for this child. I am pretty sure I would be called every other day because Joshua was yelling at the teacher for telling him/her that they were wrong. Or get in trouble for correcting his teacher. It would not be a pretty sight.

Then, Jacob was on his last word: 'caught.' He got 'cau' and then was stuck. He was frustrated and didn't know what to do. Apparently I have never asked him to do something he was unable to do. Just getting it wrong or leaving it blank isn't an option (if only everyone felt this way.) I finally convinced him to give me his paper and told him that every other word was correct but the last one (which he didn't finish and he knew was wrong). He then collapsed into tears. Seriously sobbing in my lap. I was dumbfounded. Can you imagine if every child broke down into tears because they got one problem wrong? I'm pretty sure we would have much higher test scores in our nation. ;) So, I had to imagine what kind of phone call I would have gotten that day from a teacher.

It is interesting to ponder what life would be like with public school but for now I would rather my kids sob in my lap and that I work with them on their anger management instead of someone else!