Chapter 31 Is it really that stupid?

Logically speaking, it's been less than a month since school started, and the first-grade students should have just begun to get into the learning routine. Zhang Pengfei was very surprised that he was asked to go to the school to see the teacher so soon, since Zhang Huahua hadn't said that she had caused any trouble at school!

Zhang Huahua's homeroom teacher, Liu Yueqin, is a woman in her forties, not very tall, slightly overweight, and looks kind and approachable.

Liu Yueqin was very polite to Zhang Pengfei, and she spoke very tactfully, but Zhang Pengfei was so smart that he immediately understood: she thought Zhang Huahua's foundation was too poor!

The kindergarten Zhang Huahua attended in her rural hometown was nowhere near as good as the ones in Beijing. Moreover, the competition in Beijing was fierce, especially for children who could get into this elite elementary school. It was practically a given that they could do addition and subtraction within 100 by the time they graduated from kindergarten!

But Zhang Huahua still has to count on her fingers to do addition and subtraction within 10!

As for English, it goes without saying. It's not taught at all back home, and she doesn't even know the ABCs.

What Zhang Pengfei found even more unacceptable was that Zhang Huahua didn't even know pinyin! She couldn't distinguish between bd and pq, wrote bao as dao, and piao as qiao!

Liu Yueqin showed Zhang Huahua's homework to Zhang Pengfei. After flipping through two pages, Zhang Pengfei couldn't bear to look at it: "She can't even copy it correctly!"

He couldn't help but ask himself, was his sister Zhang Huahua really that stupid?

It shouldn't be that bad, right?

How can children born to the same parents have such a big difference in intelligence?

It's rare to see a child with such a poor foundation at this school, but according to the rules, first-grade students are not allowed to be assigned homework. Helpless, Liu Yueqin had to ask Zhang Pengfei to come and hope that the parents would pay more attention and tutor their child a little after class so that the child would not fall behind in the teaching progress.

Zhang Huahua was completely unaware of this. When she saw Zhang Pengfei waiting for her at the school gate, she flew over like a little bird and sweetly called out, "Brother! Why are you waiting for me here today?"

Zhang Pengfei sighed deeply, not wanting to dampen her spirits when she was so happy, and simply said that he had arrived early today.

When he got home, Zhang Pengfei didn't rush to cook. He first made a notebook for Huahua to correct her mistakes in her homework and then copy them into the notebook.

Hua Hua looked at the big red cross on her homework, completely bewildered, and asked her brother, "Why is it wrong? How should I write it correctly?"

So, it turns out that Huahua didn't even look at the homework when it was handed out!

Zhang Pengfei took a deep breath, scratched his head, and repeatedly told himself: This is my own sister, the child is still young, I have to take it slow!

However, after teaching her for a while, Zhang Pengfei realized that, to be honest, Zhang Huahua was really incredibly stupid.

He spent half an hour teaching Huahua the 'b' and 'd', making her write and repeat after him, but when he asked her to do a dictation test, she still got them wrong!

He even suspected that Zhang Huahua's poor foundation had nothing to do with the educational level of the kindergarten in her hometown; it was simply because she was too stupid!

It seemed that Zhang Huahua was getting worse and worse at learning, and she had reached a dead end with pinyin, which she couldn't figure out in the short term. Zhang Pengfei decided to put it aside for now, switch to math, and clear his head.

He felt that math was a subject where you didn't need to memorize anything; as long as you understood it, you could do the problems correctly, just like mastering a skill. There was no such thing as being able to do one problem but not another.

Unexpectedly, Zhang Huahua once again refreshed his understanding. The first 3+2 could equal 5, and the second 2+3 could equal 6!

Zhang Pengfei, with his fiery temper, couldn't withstand such torment. He slammed his hand on the table, his teeth itching with anger, and pointed at Zhang Huahua's fingers:

"Is there a difference between 2+3 and 3+2? Look at your fingers. If you separate 2 first, you have 3 left. If you separate 3 first, you have 2 left. No matter how many you separate first, the result is always 5!"

Zhang Huahua pouted and burst into tears.

Just then, Chen Jingyang opened the door and came in. Zhang Huahua saw her savior and ran over to him, hugging his leg. She looked up at him with tears streaming down her face and began to complain, "Brother Jingyang, he scolded me!"

Zhang Pengfei jumped up and angrily said, "How dare you talk about why I'm angry? Did you even try? You can't believe you got such a simple question wrong!"

Chen Jingyang patted Zhang Huahua's head to comfort her, then looked at Zhang Pengfei with a wry smile: "Is it really that serious? What's the big deal? Why are you getting so angry with a child?"

Zhang Pengfei sneered: "Is it really necessary? Why don't you try it yourself!"

Just give it a try, really!

Chen Jingyang rubbed Zhang Huahua's face twice, then took her hand and said, "Come on, let me see what kind of question made Huahua get it wrong."

Zhang Pengfei scoffed, turned around and went into the kitchen to cook, wanting to avoid seeing it and keeping the kitchen door tightly closed!

The questions were created by Zhang Pengfei himself. There were 10 questions in total. He had done 4 of them, and there were 6 left. They were all addition and subtraction problems within 5.

Chen Jingyang has been exceptionally good at arithmetic since childhood. From the time he could remember, he had never written down addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division within 100. When he first saw Zhang Huahua counting on her fingers to do math problems, he found it very novel and was curious to see how she did it.

The problem to be solved is 5-3. Zhang Huahua first stretched out her left hand with 5 fingers, counted 123 in her mouth, removed 3 fingers, counted again and there were 2 fingers left. Hmm, it equals 2.

The next question, 5-0, stumped Zhang Huahua. How do you subtract 0? She didn't have any questions!

The little girl stared at her left hand and gestured for a long time before looking up at Chen Jingyang and asking, "Brother Jingyang, what do I do if I don't have zero fingers?"

Chen Jingyang laughed at the question. If it were Zhang Pengfei, he would probably be furious: "0 means nothing. Any number, whether you subtract 0 or add 0, equals itself. Just remember that."

Chen Jingyang was much more patient than Zhang Pengfei. He spoke softly and gently, and although Zhang Huahua was still as clumsy as ever, she finally finished her homework by the time Zhang Pengfei had finished cooking.

Zhang Huahua was overjoyed and showed off to Zhang Pengfei: "Brother, look, I've finished writing it all."

Zhang Pengfei was too lazy to look at it, thinking to himself that he didn't know if Chen Jingyang had just told him the answer before he finished writing it!

Two top students from Peking University are teaching you how to do your homework. They can spend two hours on just a few questions. What's so exciting about that?

After that, doing Zhang Huahua's homework became the biggest thing in the family; no one could eat until she finished!

Every now and then, chaos ensued, with cries filling the air. Even Chen Jingyang was a bit at a loss. He discussed with Zhang Pengfei whether they should leave the professional work to the professionals and hire a tutor.

But Zhang Pengfei disagreed. He himself was a tutor that others were willing to pay a high price for, so why did he need to hire someone else?

Besides, Chen Jingyang is a free man when he gets home from get off work. Since he is good at guiding and patient, there's no reason not to use such a useful person and spend money to hire someone else.