As standardized testing becomes the only evaluation in the Chinese educational system, students, including me, are stuck in rat race for resources and recognition. Detracting from the original purposes of education to become critical thinkers, such “involuted” education allows no alternative but rote memorization, deforming our individuality. Schools and standardized testing only focus on letting students get higher scores in STEM subjects, which is what the education policy favored, with a lack of attention to other necessary components of education.

I have long wanted to change this crux, but as someone who is deeply involved, I feel that everything I’d do means very little. One day, a friend of mine said, “I wish we could have more humanities, so we might realize the nonsense of our current situation.”

I couldn't agree more. While knowledge could be the instrument for betterment, I always believe that it is humanities that engrave compassion into us, reminding us that there is something more important than being successful in a socially conventional way, and helping us identify the hidden irrationality of societal structures such as the irrational reality of our education system. Therefore, I came up with the idea of promoting humanities education in my local community.

About one month later, I found this new non-profit education institution that provides introductory-level courses on humanities for people of all groups. I decided to reach out to them and design a course together. It was not easy: when I first joined two years ago, humanities education was not well known here, and not many people wanted to be instructors for our course. With the founder, I came up with the proposal to hire college students majoring in humanities as instructors. In China, there is a saying that majoring in humanities means starving for the future; to prove this wrong, we decided to connect with those in their employment gap.

From there on, our plan went very well. One anthropology course especially left me with a striking impression. In the class, we had over thirty students from different social groups – tech company employees, college students, residents from far-off provinces, and even middle school students. We talked about introductory anthropology theories, such as how certain norms are harmful social constructs. Through group discussions on analyzing and identifying potentially harmful social constructs, such as gender inequality, “drinking culture” in my local community, and the deformity of individuality by education involution. Many gained new perspectives. A girl said to me, “Thank you for letting me see how enlightening humanities can be. I kind of see how senseless some societal norms are.”

I hope to inspire people to reflect and introspect, to question the rationales behind norms as a way to harness critical thinking, and to truly free ourselves from the chains of our thoughts. This project gave me so much hope and taught me that it wouldn’t be the end of my endeavor. I hope to channel what I learn and experience into concrete actions and keep exploring new possibilities.