Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade: The Purpose of Education Should Be Youth Wellness

Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade has a way of asking questions about the American public school system that are as precise as they are provocative. One of his questions: “Why do we take children by law from their families at age six for 13 consecutive years for eight hours a day?” The response, he says, should be Youth wellness.

Every school, he says, “should make a promise to every family that when you drop your child off to us in the morning and turn your back and walk away, our promise to you is that when you come back and pick them up your child will be more well than when you dropped them off.”

He knows that’s impossible. But the point for Dr. Duncan-Andrade is that by simply making that promise, our schools have the chance, every day, to own it, apologize, and make it right. And while the goal of wellness might be simple, his remedy to reach it is not: A complete rethink and rebuild of public education, one built through something he calls “community responsiveness.”

Dr. Duncan-Andrade – Professor of Latina/o Studies and Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University – also seeks to bring his vision to life through the East Oakland school that he co-founded, the Roses in Concrete Community School, in lectures he delivers around the world, and through his books and numerous journal articles on effective practices in schools.

For more information, go to www.turnaroundusa.org/podcast.