An An's childhood could be described as very healthy.
In this era, there were no televisions, mobile phones, or computers, so parents couldn't blame TV shows, games, or short videos for ruining their children's lives.
Most children of this time didn't have academic pressure; they only needed to know basic arithmetic and how to read. More importantly, they had to master survival skills, with parents teaching different things depending on their environment.
City children had it slightly better, as most of them had access to formal education, though only for a few years.
By the age of ten, a child was considered a laborer. While they couldn't engage in all adult occupations, they could handle tasks like household chores.
In this era, even very young children were expected to help out. For instance, they could be assigned simple tasks like feeding rabbits.
An An's growing environment was in Wen Qian's courtyard.
Wen Qian always told her that children shouldn't walk alone outside because the forest was too dangerous. Even an adult couldn't guarantee their safety, let alone a child.
When Wen Qian was in elementary school, she could go to and from school alone and wander in the mountains and fields by herself. This was because her environment was very safe back then, with even wild boars staying deeper in the mountains.
As long as she stayed away from the water, she generally wouldn't encounter any danger.
Now, in An An's environment, the water in the small river could sweep her away. Just outside the courtyard, a short walk would lead to the woods where a child could easily get lost.
If one ventured into the denser, deeper parts, who knows what they might encounter.
Even Wen Qian, armed with a gun and walking on familiar paths, had to deal with dangerous wild animals.
Humans living in the northern forests shared the environment with other animals and plants, so people always had to stay alert in the wild. Otherwise, they might end up as forest fertilizer.
As An An grew older, Wen Qian needed to assign her tasks to expend her energy.
For example, feeding the rabbits. At first, the child was very interested, but once it became her daily chore, she wasn't as enthusiastic. If not for fear of the rabbits starving or becoming too thin, An An wouldn't have been so willing to do this task.
There was also watering the vegetables. When she was younger, she liked to water everything with her ladle, almost drowning the vegetables. As she grew older, she could do it properly, but found it boring.
To teach her to read and write, Wen Qian first pointed at everything around them and taught An An how to say the words, then wrote labels for everything on paper slips.
For the writing part, Wen Qian had An An start by drawing large characters in a sandbox. Wen Qian had various types of pens she had bought online back in the day: ballpoint pens, gel pens, pencils, fountain pens, and even brushes.
She had stockpiled these based on her usage at the time, but clearly, her later pen usage didn't match up to those days, so she had plenty left over for An An.
After the natural disaster, people could still make pencils and brushes, and many still used fountain pens, but ballpoint and gel pens were no longer as common as before.
When Wen Qian felt An An's sandbox practice was sufficient, she taught her to use a pencil. Thinking the paper quality she had was too good to waste on An An, she bought rougher, larger paper from the general store for practice.
When An An could write sentences, Wen Qian gave her notebooks to write in.
After that, An An began writing her own diary, jotting down things like what she had for breakfast and where she went with her mom - simple daily accounts.
Regarding child education, although Wen Qian hadn't prepared for raising a child before, she had a habit of keeping mementos, so she had a complete set of textbooks from her own schooling.
Wen Qian even had university textbooks. Back then, she thought the world might fall into chaos and universities might disappear, so she had collected some textbooks.
Collecting university textbooks was quite simple. During graduation season, she went to the school to collect discarded items and bought textbooks.
At that time, when university students graduated, whether they were starting jobs or going home, they usually couldn't take all their four years' worth of books with them.
The recyclers were buying paper for just a few cents per pound, so Wen Qian would stand along a busy path and ask a couple of passing students selling books. This way, she could easily collect entire sets.
So Wen Qian collected books from several different majors. After all, she had the space to store them and wasn't worried about not being able to move them.
When it came to teaching her own child, Wen Qian could generally follow the curriculum from elementary to middle school. Children have a strong learning ability, and with one-on-one instruction, it naturally didn't take the nine years that schools would use.
But when it came to high school, Wen Qian struggled. Back then, students were divided into arts and science tracks, and after her first year of high school, there were three subjects she hardly studied.
Now that she had to teach them, she was at a loss. In the end, she could only let An An choose a few subjects to study on her own and taught An An how to teach herself.
This period took quite a long time, but neither An An nor Wen Qian felt much pressure. After all, their home education environment was already better than most people's, so it wasn't a big deal if they couldn't learn everything.
The small town only offered high school level exams, and there weren't many high school students. However, having a high school education basically made one a talented individual, and some positions in the small town would prioritize hiring such people.
If someone wanted an even higher education, they would have to travel further south, but not many people could afford to go so far for this, nor did they have the financial means. Higher education was an opportunity for only a very small minority.
An An spent less time on elementary and middle school studies, so even though high school took longer, it was still faster than if she had been in school.
Later, An An also registered for the small town's high school level exams. She asked Wen Qian to buy reference books and test papers from previous years, bringing them home for targeted practice.
She found that her learning range covered all the exam topics. The current high school exams focused more on practical subjects and content that could solve specific real-world problems.
This was not only a requirement of the exams but also something Wen Qian had considered when teaching An An - solving the most practical problems, such as the mathematical applications needed to build a bridge over a small river, dealing with encounters with prey, and issues related to making ammunition.
With her self-study foundation and the purchased materials, An An successfully passed the high school level exams, thus obtaining her high school diploma.
At that time, she wasn't even fifteen years old.
Although she still wanted to continue studying, because Wen Qian had mentioned to her that in the past, one could progress through undergraduate, master's, and doctoral stages, she also wanted to keep advancing through these levels.
Another reason was that she wanted to be like her mother. Wen Qian had been an undergraduate student, so An An thought that at the very least, she should obtain a bachelor's degree like Wen Qian.
However, Wen Qian shook her head apologetically. The major she had studied back then, if applied to the present day, had absolutely no practical use. Even high school and middle school students could do that work now.
So even if An An studied it, it would be rather pointless, with no real-world applications. There would basically be no opportunity for An An to use what she learned after studying it.
For the remaining time, all Wen Qian could do was sort out the books she had collected from various majors and the basic first-year textbooks, placing them on the shelf for An An to browse as she pleased.
If she wanted to continue learning, she could just read these books. After all, at this point, being able to study at all was already not easy, and whether or not she had an official degree was no longer important.
What truly mattered was what she could learn and hold in her own hands. An An didn't care about having certification either.
