Dragon’s Den was a very fruitful experience. I gave a brief 5-min-intro of my project to the 2 Dragons, and they pointed out that the psychological impact of my most recent intervention(the Ministry of Potential) didn’t provide direct evidence to my topic.

However, the presentation on Dragon’s Den was the first time where I felt that I had the 3 different areas in balance, and more importantly, could explain the narrative of the project thoroughly to an audience. This is concrete progress for me as a writer and artist.

My question up till now is: How can we disrupt the psychological impact of result-based education on current and former students?

My main issue now is the cycle of research and interventions. I need a more logical link between my topic, the research that backs it up, and the interventions that fuels the research.

Going to upload the most recent changes of my project in a few days. The content below is the presentation I gave for Dragon’s Den on Jun.4th, 2024.

P1
[WHAT]&[WHY]
My topic focuses on 3 areas, fiction, psychology(mental health), and Chinese (education) systems.

I’m aiming to write a story, a tale that deprogrammes result-based education. Or disrupts the psychological impact of results-based education.

There’s a phenomenon in the education system in China which focuses on labelling an individual based on the results of tests and exams, (the Chinese version of “teaching to the test”)and it has severely damaged the mental health of current students,
and it doesn’t stop after we graduate, result-based education fuels a continuing belief inside us and we project it into whatever environment we enter after school, which could do huge impact on how we choose our workspace and families and life basically. It’s almost a religion in China, a Religion of Results.

P2
[WHY]
I want to address this phenomenon from the perspective of fiction.
（’cause I find that my own experience in a result-based education background has a very 1984 quality to it)(a lot of things that I thought was normal when I was immersed in that narrative were almost gruesomely absurd when I looked back on that narrative from a God’s Eye view)

Any system that labels an individual casts a fictional shadow on them. In this project, students think their work/their grades define their whole personality.
Ppl are psychologically affected because they are taught to believe that this fictional shadow in that narrative is who they actually are.

In Chinese high schools, students live in a reality based on test results, ranks and they think their future is solely depended on that.
This psychological state is the by-product of a system that pushes society forward. Really successfully actually.

See, a system, any system contains a degree of order. Like this one. When this order causes pain to the individuals within it, even though it is beneficial in macroscopic terms, we’ll need to do sth to disrupt this order.
Which is the goal of this project.

P3-5
[HOW]
The first stage of this project is to create a fictional world based on this reality(which is the education system).

In the background of this world, there is a Ministry that promises fame, money, anything you want if you get in by taking a test.
(Next page)

The audience immerses into this narrative with their mindset already accustomed to the order of results(They take the test) This mindset is disrupted when they discover(by themselves or by me telling them) that it is actually a puzzle in the shape of a test.(original idea from the Mysterious Benedict Society)

The test consists of questions that has answers in another question. I’m aiming to disrupt the idea inside ppl’s heads of learning solely for the results.

P6
(At this stage I’m currently exploring the interactive part of storytelling.)I personally prefer interactive storytelling because it allows the audience to be part of the story. And that in my opinion will make greater impact.

The next step is to tweak the media of fiction I use to give my audience a more immersive experience.

I’m really inspired by psychological experiments like Stanford Prison and the Third Wave Experiment, because they succeeded in /actually creating an alternate reality /and convincing participants to believe in that reality.

I’m aiming for my project to create an alternate reality as believable as that.
Ultimately aim to disrupt that order which is instilled inside our heads.

• Draft plan/design of your project management strategy
• Draft timeline with your goals/milestones mapped out over the Summer Independent Study Period

https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/project-management-methodology

After reading the link provided in class, I decided to develop my own project management strategy based on a combination of agile and scrum methodologies. I personally find it a bit hard to link methodologies and theories to what I’m actually doing currently in my project, so understanding all the methodologies in the list during class wasn’t directly helpful to me, but I could pick out details from the 2 methodologies I picked and slowly build a draft.

From tutorials I slowly learned to build a small cycle for the progress of my project, because my project currently have 3 different overlapping topics that doesn’t link to each other. (Fiction, Psychology, (Education) Systems)

The cycle is as follows:

1. Dig deeper into each area(research-wise)

2. Identify the link between the 3 areas. Sketch out the link between 2 and 2 and 2.

3. Revisit the old interventions, and create new ones that explore either one or two of the topics all at once.

4. Repeat all of the above. And again, and again, etc.

Because both agile and scrum methodologies welcome changing requirements even in the later stages of the projects, and introduces “sprints”, a short period of one or two weeks that plans and finishes a task very quickly. As we are having a tutorial every other week, I plan to go through the cycle in a duration of 2 weeks.

Here’s an example of a 2-week sprint:

1st Week:

(1)Find out everything about dystopian fiction. The definition, the different forms of dystopia, the famous and loved works of dystopia that already exists and the impact it created to the environment. If I were to create my own dystopia, what would it be like?

(2) Do research on what impacts students’ psychological state of mind. (The environment, their relationships, the technology of our times, etc…) Create a list of things that causes psychological impact on individuals.

(3) Sketch out the link between dystopian fiction and psychology on students.

2nd Week:

(1) Create the plan of an intervention based on the previous research and link on the first week.

(2) Carry out the intervention on stakeholders.

(3) Recap. Gather the data collected through the intervention. Record and measure the change that occurred because of the intervention.

According to the calendar above, I’ll have the time to do 5-6 sprints(which means 5-6 interventions) from June to August, leaving a 1-week period to recap all the interventions and the direction of the entire project.

The strategy and timeline in this entry is a first draft and will morph and change according to the impact of every intervention within the schedule.

Time Management Recapping

Recapping the seminar on time management, we were taught to view time in a sort of first-person narrative. So when I created a draft plan for the summer period, I viewed time from a Gods’ Eye view. While that is absolutely necessary, it isn’t an accurate perspective to actually experience and feel the entire process during the summer, so imagining a first-person narrative is helpful in this area.

If I’m on time with the schedule during the summer, then I would feel like I’m walking towards the milestones and goals that are marked throughout the timeline. If I can’t keep up, then I’ll feel like the goals are pummelling towards me and that would cause stress. The first person narrative is definitely a very new perspective for me to inspect time.

Those are two key topics that were discussed in seminars in the past two weeks. As we are preparing for 3 months of independent study, it feels like we’re packing different techniques(food, water, clothing, weapons etc) into our brains like heroes in storybooks preparing for a very long journey ahead.

autoethnography

My initial understanding of autoethnography was to tap into our own experience when doing a project. The actual definition is as follows:

Autoethnography is an approach that seeks to describe and systematically analyze(graphy) personal experience(auto) to understand cultural experience(ethno).

This somehow reminds me of a novel I read when I was 16… It’s called “Spirit Walker” (from the series “Chronicles of Ancient Darkness”) by Michelle Paver. The story is based on mythology and history in the New Stone Age. In this book, every human has three souls inside them: the name soul(on the heels), the clan soul(on the heart,representing who you belong with, your environment and surroundings), and the world soul(on the forehead). If anybody loses one of those souls in this world, they will forget what it’s like to be human and morph into demons and ghosts.

So, autoethnography, to me, is using our name soul to understand our clan soul.

(I’m just putting this here because I genuinely think like this, I’ve been told that I leap onto a different topic reeeaaally fast)

I have used autoethnography in my own project(unconsciously if I might add, because I wasn’t aware at the time that what I was doing was a method called autoethnography) when I went back to my high school in Beijing during spring break. Physically being back there did wonders in reawakening my old memories of the place. I drew from my own experience and insider knowledge on the topic, and am now at a loss of what to do next, and which area to research next. I’m probably at what I would personally like to call a stalemate.

time management

We used the Eisenhower Matrix in class to map out what would eventually be our schedule for independent study. As you can see below, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do:(

I do tend to get to this point in previous projects where my topic is too scattered for me to continue. So the next step is to gather all the info and research and other titbits I had collected(rather kleptomaniac behavior actually) and to reframe my research question into a cohesive sentence.

Right now it has stretched to 3 different topics, not unlike 3 jigsaw puzzles where I’m trying to force them together. In my own head they piece together quite well in fact…

Fiction, Psychology, (Education) Systems

How can dystopian fiction be used to disrupt the psychological impact of result-based systems on younger individuals?

The Eisenhower Matrix told me I need a more concrete plan. FAST.

The education planner test we did on the right told me I was a Tactile Learner, which means I learn best by taking action. Which I guess was right because the intervention on May 13th had a huge boost on my project as well as my personal feelings about the project. Action and physical movement does push my project forward a lot.

This is the layout of my mind map right now(I linked my Box of Uncertainties to my project recently):

I sense an adventure in the independent study period. While my thoughts and the scattered pieces of research I found are chaotic to the extent that I couldn’t succinctly describe it, they are there, and they come like the tide. I’ll just have to figure out how to take advantage of it.

We are also required to:

• Draft plan/design of your project management strategy
• Draft timeline with your goals/milestones mapped out over the Summer Independent Study Period

Honestly not quite sure how to do that yet. I will update this as soon as possible.

TBC.

References:

Spirit Walker (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness) Michelle Paver

Research Question: How can we disrupt the psychological impact of result-based education on current and former students?

What: My topic centers on the result-based orientation of the education system and the psychological impact it has on individuals. I’m interested in the fact that people within a society are required to form a balance of order in society and their own individuality, and education teaches individuals how to follow rules and to maintain order in a macroscopic sense. This either boosts idiosyncratic traits within students (because they want to escape) or it suppresses it entirely.

Why: Result-based education fuels a continuing belief in students (current and former) that grades or ranks would promise “a better future”, and we project it into whatever environment we enter next. This belief is quite common globally, especially in Asian countries, and a lot of people are suffering mentally (and sometimes physically) from it. Personally I have formed this belief as well during high school and I’m still trying to unlearn it.

How: Any system that marks or labels an individual casts a fictional shadow on them, and when this system is large enough to form a macroscopic narrative, it creates a collective belief that your fictional shadow is who you actually are. My aim is to create a similar fictional background myself for future interventions. I plan to create an alternate reality of my own perspective of result-based education and invite people to immerse into it. It’s like receiving a trigger warning or a vaccine of the real world.

Using fiction as a tool also helps to avoid confirmation bias. I strongly encourage skeptical comments about the worldbuilding itself because I’m very aware that my own perspective is biased. Therefore I would unconsciously seek conformation bias while researching. For this reason, skeptical, even negative comments are invaluable to this project.

I tested this idea during the mini-incubator by designing a puzzle in the shape of a test, with 3 pairs of questions that answers each other. (e.g. Question 1 contains the answer to Question 4, and vice versa.) The point of creating this puzzle is to create an immersive experience based on our collective memories of result-based education. I put the “test” in a fictional world called the Ministry of Potential.

1. What is the psychological term for the fear of public speaking?
A. Agoraphobia
B. Claustrophobia
C. Glossophobia 
D. Hypochondria

4. People with Glossophobia often experience a fight-or-flight response when facing what situation?
A. Reading
B. Darkness
C. Heights
D. Public Speaking

Based on the feedback I got, I was partially successful. However, the demographics of my audience were mostly Asian students which is why the feedback I got was mainly positive. I will conduct my next intervention online, which will attract a larger and more diverse audience.

What If: I’m aiming for people to be more critical of the system they are in right now, that they’ll not only have the clarity of mind to question the system in their head, but also the courage to use the system to their own benefits.

In this project, I am not only the creator and researcher, but also one of the stakeholders because I am a former student of result-based education. Being perfectly aware that the education system couldn’t be “fixed”, my ultimate goal is to let more people obtain agency within the system and develop a more active way of learning themselves.

Reading List:

Bregman, R., Manton, E. and Moore, E. (2021) Human Kind: A Hopeful History. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Brown, D. (2007). Tricks of the Mind. London: Channel 4 Books.

Brown, D. (2016). Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine. London: Transworld Publishers.

Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Curtis, A. (Producer & Director). (2002). The Century of the Self [Documentary]. BBC Four.

Foucault, M. (1961). Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge Classique [Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason]. Paris: Plon.

Huxley, A. (1932). Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus.

Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. London: Secker & Warburg.

Staff, W. (2004) Engineering god in a petri dish, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2004/09/engineering-god-in-a-petri-dish/ (Accessed: 16 May 2024).

Steiner, R. (1995). The Spirit of the Waldorf School. Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks.

Stewart, T. L. (2007). The Mysterious Benedict Society. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

The thing about dystopian fiction is that it projects and highlights a macroscopic view and reveals to people inside this view about what is inherently wrong about an orderly society or world.

Up till now I have an assumption that I know is biased. I need to collect evidence but I’m unsure of which field of evidence I should collect, therefore I have no direction and am quite lost. The only certain thing I have up till now is my rather dystopian view of result-based education.

I could project this world-view out to the world and get comments. This world-view or narrative, albeit wrong in the way that it is biased and not objective enough, will attract positive and negative stakeholders(or passersby who are interested, which kinda makes them stakeholders) who will make positive and negative comments. Audience feedback will elevate my project into a higher level and give me a more concrete direction. I secretly encourage negative(or a mix of different kinds of) feedback from this intervention because this will mean that I could find a way to break my bias.

Reminder to self: the purpose of this intervention is to collect evidence. Creating change is kinda the next step because we can’t create change when we don’t know where the painpoint is.

TBC.

Just remembered to document something from several weeks before. We watched a video called “The Art of Asking Better Questions” and answered several questions during class. (video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYnGiWlwcj4)

My answers are as follows:

What ideas/phrases have stayed with you?
Childlike questions can turn into sth more concrete(within the mind of an adult) in an adult-driven world.------Jonathon Keats

We're hierarchical creatures that don't want to shame ourselves.------Tim Ferris


Which speaker made you curious to know more about their work?
Jonathon Keats. What he said about adults thinking that childlike/stupid questions are "inappropriate" really struck me, because I tend to worry about stepping over the line when I want to ask sth that is considered absurd in the adult world.


What are some "stupid" questions you have after watching these videos?
Will we get sth different if we interview kids? Or if we ask a kid(a normal one, not a child genius) to give a presentation/talk?

To me, one speaker stood out amongst others: Jonathon Keats. So I researched his work further, and found that he had an experiment in which he attempted to genetically engineer God and to determine its place on the evolutionary tree.

And I was like, woooow.

I was really interested in anything related to Mythology and Belief(it was a HUGE chunk in my Box of Uncertainties, where I quoted Puddleglum’s belief in Narnia’s existence when he was trapped in a darker world), and I’m currently searching for modes of media other than novels, audiobooks and visual images(film and television) to demonstrate fiction. This is exactly what I was looking for.

In this project, Keats aimed to explore the intersection of science and religion by attempting to create a physical being that could be considered God. This project was more of a thought experiment rather than a scientific endeavor, which excites me because I didn’t know there was such a thing called a thought experiment;)

Keats focused more on exploring the concept rather than a literal scientific experiment. He wasn’t successful in creating a God(unsurprisingly). But he did manage to spark discussions about the nature of God, the boundaries of science, and the role of art. His initial intention was to use art and philosophy to challenge assumptions and provoke conversations, not to literally create a deity.

This is somehow extremely relatable to what I’m currently doing and searching for in my own project. I’ll sort out the logic later. This entry is literally something that I remembered was important for me but forgot to document immediately at that time.

(https://www.wired.com/2004/09/engineering-god-in-a-petri-dish/)

Adding a definition of thought experiments here:

Thought experiments are mental exercises that involve creating hypothetical situations to explore a concept, theory, or question. They act like simulations in your mind, allowing you to play out scenarios that might be impossible or impractical in the real world.

Research Question

How can we reduce the negative psychological impact of result-based education on current and former students?

(Changing details a few days later)

How can we disrupt the psychological impact of result-based education on current and former students?

what

My topic centers on the education system and the psychological impact it has on individuals. I’m interested in the fact that individuals within a society are required to form a balance of order and chaos, and education teaches individuals how to follow rules and to maintain order in a macroscopic sense. This either boosts idiosyncratic traits within individuals outside the education system or it suppresses it.

why

When an education system is result-oriented, it fuels a continuing belief in students (current and former), and we project it into whatever environment we enter next. From my knowledge, this belief is quite common globally, especially in Asian countries, and a lot of people are suffering mentally (and sometimes physically) from it. People would complain about it on scattered safe spaces on the Internet when they are outside the system and away from the rules physically.

Personally I have this belief as well and I’m still unlearning it.

how

Result-based education, or any system that labels an individual, is adding a fictional shadow to that individual. And when this system is large enough to contain enough people to form a collective story, it creates a collective belief that your fictional shadow created by the system is who you are.

I aim to create a similar fictional worldview (an alternate or parallel reality) and set that as a background for future interviews and interventions. This alternate reality is a safe space for stakeholders because with me as the creator of this fiction, I could make sure that people can enter and exit this world freely without getting immersed in it to the extent that they believe it as their reality. The worst they’ll receive is a trigger warning or a vaccine of what is actually happening in the real world. I also encourage skeptical comments about the worldbuilding itself because my own thoughts are subjective and aren’t open enough, feedback like this will be invaluable to this project.

what if

I’m hoping that people will be more skeptical/critical of the system they are in at the moment, that they’ll not only have the clarity of mind to question the system in their head, but also the courage to use the system to their own benefits.

In this project, I am not only the creator and researcher of this project, I am also one of the stakeholders because I am a former student of result-based education. I’m hoping that there will be more people(quantitatively) who obtains more agency in the education system and develop a more active than passive way of learning themselves.

reading list

Derren Brown: “Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine”

Derren Brown: “Tricks of the Mind”

George Orwell: “1984”

Aldous Huxley: “Brave New World”

Bryan Caplan: “The Case Against Education”

Michel Foucault: “Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge Classique” (Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason)

Adam Curtis: “The Century of the Self”(a documentary)

PoorRolemodel (2023). What is an ARG? [online] ARGCREATOR. Available at: https://argcreator.com/what-is-an-arg/ [Accessed 2 May 2024].

Reflecting on what I wrote:

Am I still talking about education, or am I talking about something else?

Do I stick to education or do I explain this phenomenon from a perspective that is more abstract?