Chapter 12 Our Promise 4 The City Flooded
Wu Wangwang didn't know much about the human school system; she had only heard a general outline from the original owner of the body.
The original owner said that in her place, there were no kindergartens, only the nine-year compulsory education enforced by the state, which is primary school for children aged seven to twelve and junior high school for children aged thirteen to fifteen. All children must complete these nine years of schooling, and it is free.
Although it's said to be free, there are actually some fees to pay, such as meal fees and some small fees collected separately by the class. As for what high school is like, the original owner didn't know. She wasn't particularly smart, just quite diligent, and her grades were average.
The teacher once advised her parents to let her finish high school, and after the college entrance examination, she could study at a teacher training college and become a teacher and earn money after two years. However, the original owner's parents did not agree. They just wanted their daughter to get married and exchange for money as soon as possible.
Therefore, Wu Wangwang has never understood the normal school admission system. Now that Jiaojiao brought it up, she took the opportunity to ask in the group.
[Fu Mei: Excuse me, Jiaojiao, I've never been to school. I'd like to ask, what's going on with this class?]
[Jiaojiao: ? ? ? Never been to school?]
Seeing Jiao Jiao's question mark reply, Wu Wangwang remembered that the original owner said there was compulsory education. Nowadays, very few young people have never been to school. At worst, they just went to primary school for a few days and didn't become completely illiterate, which is considered as having gone through school.
So Wu Wangwang quickly added a message back.
[Fu Mei: Ah, what I mean is, I was forced to drop out of school after junior high. Can I ask why you said that just now?]
Everyone has their own secrets and difficulties. Jiaojiao quickly realized that Fu Mei might not be doing well outside of the game, so it's normal that she doesn't know what high school is like.
So Jiaojiao first explained to her the high school system according to the era of the NPCs in the dungeon.
The high school system is actually changed every eight to ten years. In order to allow more children to study, the requirements have been relaxed. Needless to say, the new college entrance examination is different. Fu Mei's batch of students definitely refers to the old college entrance examination.
Under the old college entrance examination system, students would be assigned to classes at least twice during their three years of high school. The first time was when they entered high school and were assigned to classes based on their middle school entrance examination scores. The second time was when they were divided into arts and sciences tracks.
Fearing that Wu Wangwang might not understand, Jiaojiao even found the explanation of the arts and sciences division and posted it in the group chat.
Wu Wangwang was also checking on the company computer and found that there were many tricks to the college entrance examination. If a family was poor, they might end up in a bad major or school and regret it for the rest of their lives.
Of course, the most important thing is what was said in the group chat. According to the people in the class, it seems that they haven't been reassigned to different classes in three years.
Why?
From an institutional perspective, the separation of arts and sciences should be a rigid rule. The only subjects that arts and sciences need to take are the compulsory textbooks for Chinese, mathematics, and English. The elective textbooks are different, so it is impossible for them to be in the same class.
So how could the entire class have chosen the same subject and then been assigned to the same class in the second year of high school?
That's so strange.
Wu Wangwang kept a close eye on the leader's situation. When she noticed the leader had left, she continued chatting with Jiaojiao in the group chat.
[Fu Mei: I understand now. So there must be some reason why the school didn't separate the classes. Even if they were separated into arts and sciences tracks later, they would still attend school together.]
[Jiaojiao: But this is strange. There are so many people in a class. Even if most of them choose science, what about the humanities students? They also need to attend classes and review. What about the sports students and art students? The students in the same class can't even study together...]
No matter how you try to find reasons for this class, it's just strange. They should have been reassigned to different classes, yet they still remember the incident where two classmates went missing. When it was time to reassign the classes, they didn't.
It seems as if this class has been forgotten by the school, so they live on campus as usual, without anyone notifying them of the class reassignment or telling them that their situation is not actually normal.
At this moment, Du Luo spoke up and mentioned another possibility.
[Du Luo: It's not particularly strange. The new college entrance examination is better now. Before, when students were divided into arts and sciences, all teachers would probably advise students to study science because arts majors didn't pay well and, for people of that era, seemed to have no future. Teachers would even talk to every student who chose arts, trying their best to get everyone to choose science.]
[Jiaojiao: That seems to be true. Unless a student's humanities grades are exceptionally high or their science grades are exceptionally low, teachers generally try to persuade students to study science. But it's impossible for everyone in a class to have good science grades and still be convinced by the teacher to choose science, right?]
In short, it's because it's different from what players perceive. Anyone who's been to school knows that there are always one or two oddballs in a class that teachers can't persuade. In the end, no matter what the outcome, as long as they graduate safely, the teachers turn a blind eye.
In the eyes of most teachers, most students are actually hopeless, perhaps because of themselves, perhaps because of their families, perhaps because of the class atmosphere. In short, most students will be just ordinary people after the college entrance examination.
Under such circumstances, even if teachers try to persuade students, the advice is limited, so it's quite normal for a class to fall apart.
What's unusual about the reunion group is that everyone seems to live a very mediocre life. They've been attending classes together since the first year of high school, and under the teacher's persuasion, they all collectively chose the same subject. In the end, they all become ordinary people, reminiscing about the past in the graduation reunion group many years later.
Du Luo and Jiao Jiao planned to sneak around and inquire. It wouldn't be easy to ask in the group chat, but they could go to the school after finding out about it. They would say they were going to reminisce about their alma mater and then check the records in the archives. There was nothing more obvious than the class graduation photo.
The two of them are freelancers, so they can go anywhere easily. Wu Wangwang can only wait for their news at the company.
The work was relatively simple since no one bothered her. Wu Wangwang went home every other night. Before she knew it, it was July 29th. This day was supposed to be the time for the players to gather and exchange information for the second time. However, when Jiaojiao and Dulu went to the square, no one came. Wu Wangwang had already told them in advance that she could not ask for leave, so she did not go.
Jiaojiao complained in the group chat, "Why aren't the other players moving?"
Not only did they not show themselves, it seemed as if only the three of them remained in the entire city. If this was a dungeon that required cooperation to clear, based on the actions of the other six players, none of them could get past this level.
Wu Wangwang thought for a moment and didn't respond to Jiaojiao's words. Jiaojiao was a shy person who needed emotional support. The world in her eyes must be very beautiful, but most people in the world are still wary and timid, and they will not listen to her advice just because she is kind.
The players are so clearly divided when it comes to their own interests.
What a hilarious scene it would be if all nine players were sitting in the same private room when the party started!
On July 30th, Jiaojiao finally found out the school's name from the group chat and followed Du Luo to the school's address without stopping, trying to find useful information.
That evening, Jiaojiao brought back a graduation photo and the list of names on the back of the photo.
[Jiaojiao: I got this identity from our former homeroom teacher. He was a male teacher, in his early fifties, and he still had a deep impression of our class because of the two students who went missing back then.]
[Fu Mei: So, this class really hasn't separated for three years?]
The story was too long, and Jiaojiao said that typing was too tiring, so she made a group call. Coincidentally, Wu Wangwang was not working overtime that night, so she answered the phone at home. The group call consisted of only the three of them.
After answering the call, Jiaojiao asked, "Fu Mei, can you hear me? Is the signal good?"
Wu Wangwang tested the volume and replied, "I can hear you. My signal is pretty good, it feels quite real-time."
Since the phone call was working, Jiaojiao began to recount the information her homeroom teacher had provided during the day.
The homeroom teacher was a man in his forties when he took over their class. He was a senior teacher, mainly because he was very capable. Some classes with good grades but who were difficult to manage would be assigned to him.
Don't say that class assignments are based solely on grades. In fact, grades can reveal a lot. Moreover, during the admissions process, teachers communicate with each other and know exactly what kind of students they admit.
Therefore, it is common in schools that students in a certain class have similar personalities and behavior styles, which can be considered a passive phenomenon of "birds of a feather flock together".
Initially, the class approached their homeroom teacher, whose reasoning was that the students in the class were mediocre, but often the more mediocre the students are, the harder they are to keep in check.
There are so many things to do in the three years of high school, both for teachers and students. They will be so busy that there is no watershed moment in their lives. To put it bluntly, once students have passed the first year of high school, they are what they are and they will not change.
Students who excel in junior high school will have an even better chance of getting into the top classes in high school. Only one or two of them will occasionally slip up, while those with poor grades will almost never have another chance to improve, and very few will actually succeed.
This is similar to the division into arts and sciences. The mainstream is science, and even if there are one or two arts students, the school will still focus on the mainstream.
Teachers definitely have to take care of most students; with so many students in a class, it's impossible to attend to everyone.
But the middle classes are a delicate matter. They won't improve anymore, but they are prone to falling behind. Ironically, the admission rate of each school actually depends on these middle-achieving students. One or two top scorers are naturally glorious, but if a school only produces one student admitted to a top-tier university and the rest are all junior college students, no one will think it's the school's achievement.
So the school's policy that year was to improve the top classes and stabilize the middle classes. Fu Mei's class was one of the better middle classes. If it had been stabilized, at least three-quarters of the students would have been able to get into second-tier universities, and the undergraduate admission rate would have been excellent.
Xu Long, the homeroom teacher, was promoted in this way. His class was always relatively stable, so the grade leader assigned the task to him.
After taking over the class, Xu Long found that the students had similar grades, similar personalities, and even more similar relationships. He found the class very challenging, as everyone seemed to be living according to a standard template. As a teacher, he felt that whatever he did would disrupt the students' balance.
Xu Long couldn't afford the consequences of breaking the rules, so he could only follow the norm and let the students study and play normally, until the parents came to make a scene.
When Jiaojiao and the others asked, Xu Long sighed: "This was also my oversight. I came to check every day and even asked the class leaders, but because the students in this class were too easy to manage, each of them was very self-disciplined and was a model student who was hardworking, diligent and obedient, so as long as the class leaders told me the reason for their departure, I believed it to be true."
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Author's Note: [End of Chapter]
My period is over, so here's a sudden update!
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