From a teenager’s perspective, it can feel like school gives us as much as Dua Lipa dancing to “One Kiss” in 2018-which is nothing. From mind-dumbing busy work to students not understanding material due to the teacher’s mach-ten speed, the whiplash between 2nd-grade art project to PHD work makes high schoolers feel stupid, no matter what academic stereotype we’ve been assigned.

 We’ve been classified into boxes since we could identify the color blue. But how many categories can we really fit students into? In the grand scheme of things, what do these groups give us? 

Exhibit A: the TAG program. According to The New York Times, “More than three million U.S. public school students are estimated to be enrolled in gifted programs.” Based on a faculty recommendation of an eight-year-old, a standardized test, and the ability of your parents to drive you across town, students have been placed on a pedestal by themselves and teachers. 

  I’m a TAG survivor: my mom made me take the test for the possibility of having an English-focused “Young Sheldon”-esque daughter. I was bored where I was, not content-wise, but culture-wise. I needed a social change; I wanted to meet new people in a new environment. 

But this new environment had ten-year-old me sobbing over my NWEA math score because it was 30 points off from my peers: “Kim, there’s people that are dying”.

 I’ve been extremely lucky to grow up in a household where books, movies, and music lined every wall- I learned how to tell a story before I learned how to hold a pencil; my imagination was my forte. My mom hoped that TAG would give me an outlet to develop creatively, to be pushed and inspired by other “like-minded” peers and exceptional teachers. 

  This wasn’t the case. Math was at the forefront, and all other subjects seemed less important, making students who didn’t understand integers in fourth grade feel insignificant. We knew who the math-masterminds were as well: their scores shimmered on a pink-glittery clipboard every Friday, their pictures were posted down in the office, they would be bluntly pulled into the hallway for “special math” time – leaving everyone else further behind with unbalanced instruction and an immense amount of humiliation. For most of our lives, we’ve been told that we were intelligent, that we were capable, that we were special: now we’re nothing but a small fish with a low number in a big sea of strangely calculated, farting fifth-grade boys. This overly competitive classroom setup produced a sequence of doubt: if we weren’t talented or gifted, what were we? 

 In middle school, I was placed in non-honors classes, and watched previous peers grow in specialized courses with the same groups of people time and time again. Rarely, a couple of kids would burst into the bubble, filling the spaces of those who left. This pattern continued into high school, with STEM blocks and AP programs containing the same group of selected students. 

 Like it or not, non-honors programs are the polar opposite of their accelerated counterparts. While a community is cultivated in these specialized areas, it’s an illusion. These spaces aren’t reflective of the “real world” and the people teenagers will interact with outside the school’s walls. However, in regular-paced courses, students are less isolated. It’s lifelike: there’s a variety of characters, and problem-solving skills are built to comply. Yet in terms of time devotion and directive, I’ve observed that general education courses have a fourth of the resources compared to honors classes. It’s assumed that the majority of students in those classes aren’t as driven or as eager to learn, but generally they don’t have the opportunity of incentive – and lack of educators willing to give them that chance. Studies observed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) suggest that “the greatest influence on student achievement comes not from students’ socioeconomic status but from teachers’ classroom practices and professional development”.

 Teachers don’t typically have a say in the classes they teach – while partiality is considered, certification takes precedence. Potential disinterest shows in detached teachers and coursework; this overall leads towards disconnect between subject and the students in general education. Contrastingly, the introduction of block programs weaves in several subjects. Nevertheless, the specialty of these classes still revolve around science and math.Though there’s been an attempted shift away from solely the sciences in advanced classes. Aimee Cole teaches both AP Language and English in the freshman STEM block, which has incorporated humanities in the past two years and functions as an entryway into other rigorous subjects – yet, despite increasing accessibility to different modes of thinking, still demonstrates a clear divide between students. 

  “Kids understand that people and subjects shouldn’t be in isolation, and that literature is a response to everything, from history to life, which is why understanding literature is so important. There’s isolation every time you select a certain group of students and separate them, that isolation is limiting to both them and other students. I know we had a waiting list of students trying to get into the STEM block, and the students that were in the STEM block had the opportunity to opt out, not opt in. In AP Lang, any student can sign up for that, but I see when I have students who haven’t been in honors before, they naturally feel like they shouldn’t be here. It takes a lot to show them that they do,” Cole said. 

   It can take endless amounts of effort demonstrating to adolescents that their drive, morals, and ethics matter, and it depends on the type of teacher that attempts to do so. When the school gives lackluster opportunities for all students to succeed, why should we give our all to education when it’s clearly not in favor of everyone?