The classroom goes quiet when she raises her hand. Not because her question is particularly insightful, but because everyone knows what is coming next. Before the teacher can respond, a student in the back mutters just loud enough to be heard: “That’s so obvious.” A few others smirk. The girl lowers her hand, her face flushed, and doesn’t ask another question for the rest of the semester. Welcome to TAG culture at Westwood, where an arbitrary classification assigned to you in elementary school determines not just your class schedule, but your social standing. 

The Texas Education Agency defines a student suitable for the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program as “a child or youth who performs at or shows the potential for performing at a remarkably high level of accomplishment when compared to others of the same age, experience, or environment.” 

The problem isn’t the designation itself, but rather what happens when you tell a group of adolescents that they are inherently superior to their peers. With students receiving the designation at such a young age, it’s no wonder why they develop inflated egos that follow them long after the TAG designation loses relevance.

“The [school] environment tends to change slightly because TAG kids tend to hang around other TAG kids,” Ishaan Desai ‘29 said. “This creates a social divide amongst the people of Westwood.” 

Educational research has documented the effects of ability for decades. When students internalize these designations, they do not just see themselves as working harder or knowing more material; rather, they begin to view intelligence as a fixed trait that separates them fundamentally from others. The label becomes an identity. 

At Westwood, this manifests in classrooms hierarchies that everyone can see but few want to name. TAG students cluster together, dismissing questions from peers as “obvious” or “easy.” They perform their self-determined intellectual superiority like a rehearsed script, measuring their worth by how much faster they finish tests or how little they claim to study while still earning top grades. 26.58% of all enrolled students in Westwood fit this definition. Yet the label has become less a meaningful designation of exceptional ability and more of a status symbol, a badge students want to wear to justify superiority complexes. 

“I was aware of the TAG label in kindergarten; it was explained to me as not a higher-level class but a different way of thinking,” Benjee Zhang ‘29 said.

Perhaps nowhere is the TAG ego more insufferable than in math classes. Every single year, TAG students spend months complaining about their math class. The homework is too hard. The tests are impossible. The teacher explains things poorly. Group chats become a collective place for students to talk about how unreasonably difficult the course is.

But then something fascinating happens in the span of three months. The next school year arrives, and suddenly those same students who spent nine months drowning in work transform into mathematical geniuses. When the new crop of students begins struggling with the same material the TAG students did the year before, the TAG veterans swoop in with condescending mockery. 

“This is so easy,” they announce to anyone within earshot. “I don’t understand what’s so hard about this.” They conveniently forget their own struggles, their late-night panic texts, their complaints about unfair grading. The empathy they might have developed from their own difficulties evaporates, replaced by an amnesia that serves their ego more than their memory.

“[Students show] less remorse to someone who may not have done as well as them on an assignment, likely because Westwood’s competitive nature is very harsh.” Mikhail Gundogdu ‘27 said.

This cycle reveals something crucial about how the TAG identity operates. It isn’t about actual competence or even confidence in one’s abilities. It’s about maintaining a hierarchy, about ensuring there’s always someone below you to remind you of your designated superiority. 

The real damage of TAG culture extends far beyond bruised egos and classroom tension. It actively undermines learning for students both inside and outside the program. For non-TAG students, the message is clear and constant: you are not smart enough. You don’t belong in these conversations. Your questions slow everyone down. Even when teachers try to create inclusive environments, the social dynamics established by TAG often override those efforts. 

“I’ve felt looked down upon for not being in TAG at some points because most of my friends are in TAG,” Gundogdu said. “It also gave me less of a chance to see them on a day to day or communicate about school outside of a school environment.” 

The question is not whether some students need different academic challenges — they definitely do. Rather, the question is whether we can provide those challenges without creating a system where a childhood designation becomes a social hierarchy that damages everyone involved.