In these times, people in rural areas didn’t pay much attention to education, thinking that once children finished compulsory education, they should start working. However, people in towns placed a high value on education, often giving extra lessons to their children and pushing them to start school earlier. Some children were even sent to school when they turned four years old.
In his previous life, Zhu Yun Xuan encountered a classmate who skipped two grades and started school early. Unfortunately, that child often finished the lessons at home before class and became inattentive during lessons. Initially, the student was one of the top performers in the class, but over time, their grades began to drop. Every time their grades suffered, they would have visible slap marks on their face from their parents. Eventually, the child repeated the third year of middle school and then paid to attend the best high school in the city.
In contrast, Zhu Yun Xuan had always been a student who just passed the time, treating school as a task that had to be completed like many other students.
His parents spoiled him, and since both Zhu Cheng Cai and Jiang Yue Xiu only graduated from elementary school, they never kept a close watch on his studies. They were the type to avoid teacher-parent meetings and couldn’t even understand what teachers were saying… Zhu Yun Xuan remembered that when he was in elementary school, because his mother couldn’t write in standard Mandarin, she would just let him copy the words instead of making him memorize them. Sometimes, when he didn’t do well in exams, he would cover his father’s signature with peach blossom paper, trace over it with a pen, and then press the paper onto the exam sheet to leave an imprint. Afterward, he would trace the imprint with a pencil, writing as if it were his father’s signature. He did this for a long time without getting caught. By the time he reached middle school, he had stopped asking his parents to sign anything and had started writing his father’s name himself, passing it off as his father’s handwriting.
In his previous life, Zhu Yun Xuan never really studied. In middle and high school, he didn’t even bother copying other people’s homework. In the end, he only got into a second-tier university by sheer luck. But in this life, he had made up his mind not to just go through the motions.
Because he had decided to stop wasting time, during his free time, Zhu Yun Xuan started thinking about skipping a grade. After experiencing the first-grade life for a couple of days, his resolve grew stronger, and that’s why he made a bit of a show of it.
Many first-grade students could understand second- and third-grade knowledge, after all, the parents in the town valued education, and even the kindergarten’s senior class taught math and over a hundred characters! But very few could grasp fourth-grade knowledge. Moreover, Zhu Yun Xuan’s cousin, Qian Bin, had just graduated from fourth grade.
Zhu Yun Xuan knew that the principal probably wouldn’t think of him as a child prodigy. Most likely, the principal would think that he was just a smart child whose parents taught him well. However, regardless of what the principal thought, if there were any Olympiad math or essay competitions in the city, and if a first-grade student won a prize…
“My name is Zhu Yun Xuan, from Class 4, Grade 1.” Zhu Yun Xuan answered directly.
“Who taught you all this?” The principal asked again.
“My aunt taught me,” Zhu Yun Xuan replied, giving a vague answer. However, the principal probably wouldn’t ask who his aunt was. If he did… could he blame it on Xiao Hui? After all, Zhu Yun Xuan had spent quite some time at Li Rui’s house!
As for his parents… Zhu Yun Xuan was sure that in the minds of Jiang Yue Xiu and Zhu Cheng Cai, he was undoubtedly the smartest child. Furthermore, they wouldn’t dare to speak much to the teacher, even if they had doubts about what the teacher said. At that point, he could always claim that Li Rui was the one who taught him, right?
“You tell me, what exactly happened before? Did your teacher scold you?” The principal asked again. He knew who the teacher of Class 4, Grade 1 was, and he wasn’t going to blame the teacher for a single student. However, he still needed to remind that Teacher Chen to be a little more careful.
As for skipping a grade, according to the city’s rules, an application had to be submitted at the end of the school year in advance. If a first-grade student could bring glory to the school…
Zhu Yun Xuan didn’t embellish the story, he simply stated the facts. He wasn’t expecting the principal to severely punish Teacher Chen on his behalf, but he would make sure to perform well in the future, making the teacher regret her actions!
“Principal, my parents will worry about me. Could you please make sure the teacher doesn’t keep me after school and let me go home?” Last night, he and several other students had been kept after class because they didn’t master the pinyin correctly. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t know pinyin, but rather that the teacher probably wanted to meet with their parents and give them the impression of being responsible.
After the parents of the first ten or so students had come to pick them up, Teacher Chen either praised or encouraged some of the students, while telling the parents of others to go home and teach their children better. Zhu Yun Xuan thought that if Jiang Yue Xiu came to pick him up, the teacher would likely complain about him to Jiang Yue Xiu and tell her to teach him better when they got home.
“No problem. I’ll go tell the teacher not to keep you tonight, okay?” The principal said in a coaxing tone, as if talking to a child.
“Thank you, Principal!” Zhu Yun Xuan smiled and flashed a big grin.
“Zhu Yun Xuan, our school has an Olympiad math class starting from third grade. Would you like to join?” The principal said with a smiling face.
“Sure!” Zhu Yun Xuan immediately agreed. This wasn’t about reducing his academic load. Wende Town Primary School had always compared itself with city schools, looking at the number of winners in various competitions. In fact, Wende Town Primary School was even better than some city schools, partly thanks to the Olympiad math class.
Zhu Yun Xuan wasn’t particularly good at the arts, especially English. Because he never liked memorizing words, it had always been his weakest subject. But science was a different story. In his previous life, when he was in third grade, his teacher didn’t let him join the Olympiad math class. But by fifth grade, when the class was opened to all students, he managed to perform better than many of the students who had been attending the class all along, mainly by guessing and speculating. Naturally, he became a member of the Olympiad class.
Back then, the class went through several rounds of elimination, and only about thirty students remained. After three lessons in the afternoon, they would be taken to the reading room for free tutoring. On Saturday mornings, they had Olympiad math classes for the whole morning. Before a city competition, the school selected a team of more than ten students through exams. Zhu Yun Xuan was lucky enough to be one of them, which meant he didn’t have to go to regular classes in the afternoon anymore, he only focused on Olympiad math. The only exception was the English class, which they all attended by moving their chairs to listen to the lesson.
However, at that time, Zhu Yun Xuan was quite lazy. Most of the Olympiad math homework assigned by the teacher was copied from others. He remembered one time when he copied someone else’s work and found that one of the logic puzzles seemed wrong. So, he did it again himself, and in the end, the person who had borrowed his work got only one correct answer out of ten, while he got two right. That person wasn’t happy about it and even complained to the teacher, but Zhu Yun Xuan was experienced at copying. He added some extra content while copying, and in the end, that person was scolded by the teacher and ended up crying.
After learning Olympiad math for so long, Zhu Yun Xuan could confidently solve the last bonus question in every math exam. However, what left the deepest impression on him was the novels by Zheng Yuanjie in the reading room.
Given his lazy attitude, Zhu Yun Xuan knew there was no way he would stand out in the Olympiad class. His best achievement was winning a third-place prize in the city competition.
In his previous life, Zhu Yun Xuan always saw learning as a form of torture and couldn’t wait to stop studying once he graduated from middle school. But in this life, he was determined not to be like that anymore!
The principal took Zhu Yun Xuan to the office, where Teacher Chen was indeed present. She knew that Zhu Yun Xuan had run away, but since the school gate was locked and no child could climb over the walls, she wasn’t particularly worried.
It was the first time she had encountered a child like Zhu Yun Xuan, who dared to talk back to a teacher, and thinking about it now, it still gave her a headache! She remembered when Zhu Yun Xuan’s mother brought him in to fill out the registration form. The woman struggled to write a few simple words and had to ask how to write them. She thought to herself, “Typical of rural people, they don’t know how to respect teachers and education!”
But she never expected that Zhu Yun Xuan would be brought back by the principal!
The principal made her reflect on whether she had done her job properly, advised her not to punish the children recklessly, and even said that Zhu Yun Xuan was a promising child who needed to be nurtured properly…
Could this Zhu Yun Xuan have connections? If so, then what about what happened before…?
Seeing Teacher Chen’s expression change repeatedly, going from pale to greenish, Zhu Yun Xuan decided to strike while the iron was hot: “Teacher Chen, I want to sit at the back! I want to sit alone!” There were forty-seven students in their class, with two students per desk, but one student was without a desk partner. For Zhu Yun Xuan, that seat was the best one.
“Then after class, I’ll move you to the back,” Teacher Chen smiled and replied. “Why did you go to the principal earlier?”
“Because the principal is higher than the teacher!” Zhu Yun Xuan didn’t answer directly, but he could see Teacher Chen’s face turning even darker.
What Zhu Yun Xuan didn’t know was that, as soon as the principal returned, he discussed his situation with the vice-principal. After thinking it through, both of them agreed that a child like Zhu Yun Xuan should be nurtured carefully, but also not be raised too high. There were too many children like Zhong Yong who were incredibly gifted at a young age, what a waste it would be if Zhu Yun Xuan just remained a “child prodigy” and didn’t continue to develop!
In the evening, when school ended, Zhu Yun Xuan left the school early. As soon as he reached the school gate, he saw Jiang Yue Xiu, and his heart warmed.
Yesterday, when the other children were leaving, he had stayed behind for a while, and Jiang Yue Xiu must have been worried about him.
First grade in primary school also had homework: copying all the pinyin they had learned onto their pinyin notebooks, completing a page of exercises, and doing a few simple addition problems with numbers up to five.
Zhu Yun Xuan worked quickly. While Jiang Yue Xiu took him to wait for Zhu Cheng Cai to finish work so they could head home together, Zhu Yun Xuan completed his homework at a stall. Then, recalling the lies he had told earlier, he begged Jiang Yue Xiu to help him borrow books from his cousin.
Jiang Yue Xiu saw her son’s passion for learning and naturally agreed without hesitation. In fact, even if Zhu Yun Xuan suddenly decided to go visit his cousin, she would definitely agree to that as well!
Jiang Yue Xiu had one older brother and one older sister. Jiang Bin was her sister Jiang Yueying’s son. Jiang Yueying married a man who lived on the other side of the small town, though it wasn’t far to get there.
Zhu Yun Xuan’s grandmother didn’t like children, but his maternal grandmother, on the other hand, was completely different, she was someone who adored children. She had doted on her firstborn, naturally the one she loved the most. Therefore, Jiang Yueying had become somewhat lazy… Of course, Zhu Yun Xuan felt he had no right to criticize her because when he wasn’t kicked out of his home, he never did any household chores.
Jiang Yueying didn’t have a job and stayed at home to take care of her sick mother-in-law and do the cooking. Although she had some flaws, her life had been very smooth, and her son, Qian Bin, was a particularly diligent person.
When Jiang Yue Xiu brought Zhu Yun Xuan over, Jiang Yueying immediately greeted them and gave Zhu Yun Xuan a banana to eat. Upon learning their purpose for coming, she quickly led Zhu Yun Xuan to her son’s room.
Qian Bin’s room was neat and tidy, definitely not the work of Jiang Yueying. On the other hand, Jiang Yueying’s search through the room was chaotic, and she couldn’t find the textbooks Zhu Yun Xuan needed…
“Xiao Xuan, my textbooks are under the bed,” in the end, it was Qian Bin, who had ridden his bike back home, that moved a cardboard box out from under the bed. Inside were neatly organized textbooks. “These books are a little worn, but is that okay?”
“They’re still like new! Thank you, Brother!” Zhu Yun Xuan immediately replied, and indeed, the textbooks were in great condition.
Carrying a pile of textbooks home, Zhu Cheng Cai couldn’t help but ask him if he knew how to read. Zhu Yun Xuan proudly patted his chest and said, “Dad, we’ve learned pinyin, so we can use a dictionary to recognize characters on our own, it’s really simple! A lot of my classmates already went to a pre-school class during the summer, and they finished learning all the pinyin!”
The so-called pre-school class was actually just extra lessons given by elementary school teachers for children who were about to enter school.
He remembered that the school would make students buy dictionaries. As for the materials for advanced math, they had to wait until after classes started to buy them.
Having lived again, he was more disciplined than a group of real children. He believed that he wouldn’t fall behind a group of kids. However, his weak point in his previous life had been English. Now, shouldn’t he take advantage of his free time to memorize some English words? It would be too embarrassing if, after having been reborn, he ended up relying on past achievements and getting worse year by year! So, he decided to start working hard on his studies from first grade!