Xiao Jiu likes to lie down next to her brothers and watch them do their homework when they come home.
My eldest brother is 11 years old this year and will be entering the fifth grade this fall.
Tao Ran, who is two years younger than him, is nine years old this year and in the fourth grade. He and his older brother just finished their primary school graduation exams before the summer vacation.
Only those who pass this exam can enter the upper primary school, which is a higher-level school than the lower primary school.
Primary school is from grades one to four. Because my second brother had excellent grades, he was better at studying than my eldest brother from a young age. He even skipped grades one to three.
Because the first and second grade classes were combined, meaning the first grade was taught first, then students studied on their own, and then the second grade was taught, my second brother learned all the knowledge points for the first and second grades in his first year of school and passed the exam to enter the third grade directly.
That's why he was able to pass the promotion exam smoothly at the age of nine and receive the admission notice to higher primary school.
In other words, after the fall semester starts, the eldest and second eldest brothers can go to the town primary school together. It's about three kilometers from home. In those days when transportation was underdeveloped, they would eat lunch there and walk back in the evening. Depending on their walking pace, it would take at least an hour to get home.
They all started school at the age of six or seven. The second brother skipped a grade and studied for a year with the eldest brother, so it really shows that studying really depends on talent.
The same teachers and parents raised the same kids, but the second brother's self-discipline was outrageous. His handwriting was also neat and orderly. He was more composed than the eldest brother in his speech and actions. Compared to the eldest brother's honesty and integrity, he was more like an old cadre.
Tao Qing, the third brother, is seven years old. He just finished first grade and will enter second grade in the fall. His school is relatively close, located in the town, and is only a ten-minute walk away.
Tao An is four years old and still plays in the middle class of the preschool class. Apart from Xiao Jiu, he is the happiest and most cheerful person in the family. He sings and dances every day, plays on the slide, or chases and plays with his friends. He has endless energy when he comes home from school. Compared to her quiet reading companion, he seems a bit noisy, so his older brothers often lock him outside when they are doing their homework.
At first he was unwilling, but after being beaten up, he ran away crying to find his grandmother. After he ran away, his third brother couldn't help but complain.
"Cry, cry, cry! All he does is cry all day long. He's not even as good as our Xiao Jiu. Look how well-behaved Xiao Jiu is. He never cries like that. He's such a disgrace to us men!"
"Finally it's quiet. Hurry up and write, then I'll take Xiaojiu out to play."
The table was square, with the three older brothers each occupying one side. Xiao Jiu knelt on a stool, sitting in the main seat. She quietly flipped through their books, waiting patiently for them to finish their homework.
The older brothers' homework was divided into calligraphy and fountain pen. The so-called fountain pen was actually a quill pen dipped in ink. Calligraphy was done with a brush, mainly used to practice writing large characters. The quill pen dipped in fountain pen ink was for normal problem-solving homework. The third brother was still using a pencil. In the first, second and third grades of primary school, they used both brushes and pencils. In the fourth grade, they would gradually start to practice using quill pens. In the upper primary school, pencils were completely phased out and quill pens were used. Of course, if the family was well-off, they could directly use fountain pens.
It is very much in line with the characteristics of the times, because the characters we write now are still traditional characters, and we pay great attention to the calligraphy left by our ancestors. There is calligraphy homework every day. When Xiao Jiu accompanies her to study, she smells the pungent smell of ink and feels like she is in another world. In her previous life, she only came into contact with a brush when she was taking calligraphy class. She never expected that in this era, there would be calligraphy practice as part of the daily homework.
If only future elementary school students could pick up this subject, it would be great. Unfortunately, time is wasted on learning English, and many cultural traditions passed down from our ancestors have been lost.
That's why people have always said that education is expensive and difficult. The equipment these brothers have is not something that ordinary families can afford.
Not to mention the schoolbag, which was sewn stitch by stitch by my grandmother and mother.
Just the cost of pen, ink, paper, and books for one child can reach 100,000 to 200,000 yuan a year. Now there are four children, and that adds up to over a million yuan a year. This doesn't even take into account inflation causing people to carry sacks of books to buy. Education is truly a major test of a family's financial situation.
So, inspired by her brothers' learning, Xiao Jiu secretly vowed that she would study hard in the future and try to skip grades to reduce tuition fees.
Her only shortcoming is that she can't write traditional Chinese characters. She has practiced calligraphy for many years and is quite good at both soft-pen and hard-pen calligraphy. Writing is not a problem for her, but memorizing traditional Chinese characters requires accumulation from childhood.
Although traditional Chinese characters were not abolished all at once, but rather transitioned through several stages after the founding of the People's Republic of China, in the late 1960s, mid-1970s, and early 1980s, many of the calligraphy models she copied as a child were in traditional characters. However, she only used them when practicing calligraphy and did not use them in daily life. Therefore, only in the current situation can they be deeply rooted in her mind.
Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan still use traditional Chinese characters. Not all traditional characters have been simplified. Some characters are still in traditional form, but they are used less in daily life.
Second brother Tao Ran is extremely patient. He not only finishes and checks his own homework, but also looks at the homework of his eldest brother and Tao Qing. If he finds anything wrong, he will revise it until he is satisfied, just like a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
His leadership skills were so good that even his elder brother listened to him without question and never felt impatient or jealous.
In contrast, the patriarchs of the Tao family seemed to have never worried about their children's schooling, and had never even looked at them. They were raised in such a laissez-faire manner, yet the children still did so well in school. This reminded her of her own childhood when her parents were both civil servants, and every day there were different people supervising her studies.
The advantage of doing this was that she developed good study habits. The disadvantage was that her self-care ability was somewhat poor in the early stages. It was only after her parents went into business in the fifth grade of elementary school that she was too busy to take care of her and had two years of freedom. However, because some of her habits had already formed muscle memory and biological clock, she did not fall behind in the transition from elementary to junior high school and was admitted to a key junior high school with excellent grades.
Later, she started boarding school. After that, her parents rarely saw her. Every week when she returned home, instead of a hot meal, she had to do her own laundry, wash her shoes, and tidy up her belongings. All her parents left her with were snacks, milk, food, nice clothes, shoes, and lots of loose change that they had prepared for her in advance. It was extremely difficult for her to see them. So, after starting junior high school, her excellence was truly earned through loneliness and boredom.
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