Thinking about it more, I think Dylan was totally wrong in his premise and his aims.
His objective was to banish fear of failure. To do that he wanted to remove competition, get rid of grades, which are a mark of success, and to increase engagement to foster the attitude that there is no shame in failing. The problem with his system is that it is a one size fits all approach and certainly doesn't work for high achievers. He is not using any differentiation for the children.
The boy who had trouble with his behaviour never bothered trying, because he thought he would fail, so why try and then fail?, it's better not to even try. He's an adherent of the Homer Simpson philosophy "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."
Children like that need their confidence boosting and they need better individual teaching, differentiated to their level, so that they can see that it is possible to succeed by trying. They shouldn't be competing at Emily's level. Dylan's solution is to remove competition altogether, so that failure won't be so evident to this boy. This boy fails because he doesn't try and he needs individualised teaching that can help him to succeed in small steps.
But the most pernicious mistake in Dylan's experiment, is that he doesn't understand teh mentality of highfliers. He doesn't understand what makes them tick, what makes them successful. He's read the articles about failure and how people should overcome the feel-bad fear of failure. he doesn't understand that teh most successful people on the planet, the real highfliers, are precisely those who have the greatest fear of failure. read the biographies of the rich and famous and you will see it appear very often, they are driven to succeed through fear of failure. They are perfectionists like Emily, they hate and fear failure more even than the boy at the bottom of the class does. they will do anything to succeed, they will go the extra mile, because they don't want to fail. That's why it was the cleverest kids like Emily who removed their lolly sticks from the box, and not the other kids. Dylan was intenet on removing their fear of failure. He forced them to continue using lolly sticks and they got more and more questions wrong. They started getting more and more despondent and in the end they no longer cared if they got it right or wrong or if they arrived at class 15 minutes late. Dylan had succeeded in removing their fear of failure, he had extinguished the flame that drove them to succeed. the light had gone out and they didn't care anymore, they didn't try anymore, what was the point? He had diminished their ambition, lowered their aspiration, turned off their engine and dumbed them down.
The low achievers fail because they are afraid to try. The high achievers try because they are afraid to fail.
The solution is not to remove competition and grades etc., but to differentiate between the pupils and let them compete with children of a similar level.
Dylan's experiment is bound to fail because it is a one size fits all policy that doesn't meet the needs of high achieving kids. It is just more of the progressives' dumbing down policy dressed up in new clothes and armed with lolly sticks and mini whiteboards.