This TED Talk features sociologist and author In India Kundu, recorded live at TED Residency 2019.

My first job out of college was as an academic researcher at one of the largest juvenile detention centers in the country.

And every day I would drive to this building on the west side of Chicago,

go through the security checkpoint, and walk down these brown brick hallways as I made my way down to the

basement to observe the intake process. The kids coming in were about 10 to 16 years old, usually

always black and brown, most likely from the same impoverished

south and west sides of Chicago. They should have been in fifth to 10th grade, but instead they

were here for weeks on end awaiting trial for various crimes. Some of them came back to the facility

14 times before their 15th birthday.

And as I sat there on the other side of the glass from them, idealistic with a college degree,

I wondered to myself, why didn't schools do something more to prevent this from happening?

It's been about 10 years since then.

I still think about how some kids get track towards

college and others towards detention, but I no longer think about school's abilities to

solve these things. You see, I've learned that so much of this problem is systemic that often

our school system perpetuates the social divide.

It makes worse what it's supposed to fix.

That's as crazy or controversial as saying that our health care system isn't preventative,

but somehow profits off of keeping us sick.

Oops.

I truly do believe, though, that kids can achieve great things despite the odds against them.

And in fact, my own research shows that.

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