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The Tools to Be Free

Social Citizenship, Education, and Service in the 21st Century
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Linking broad-based public service to post-secondary education is the best way to make our society more free. Access to college ought to be a social right of citizenship. The core idea in T.H. Marshall's concept of social citizenship is that, in addition to civil and political rights, people hold social rights, including guarantees to housing, health care, basic income, and, especially, an adequate education. These are resources we all need to participate in society as full and equal members. In America, opponents of these guarantees have effectively mobilized deeply held liberal ideas, arguing that state action is a threat to freedom. Against this, progressive arguments about fairness have fallen flat. Looking outside liberalism, this book offers a new approach. It argues, first, the civic republican tradition provides an authentically American basis for the social rights of citizenship. Republicanism understands that true freedom requires a degree of personal independence. The ultimate justification for egalitarian policies, especially in education, is that they make us more free. Second, our first major policy step in this direction ought to be adopting a large-scale service-to-school program designed to increase access to post-secondary education.
Stephen Minicucci is a political scientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Written with verve and learning, this call for a vigorous social citizenship makes connections, necessary ones, that link thought, history, and practice. Supplementing the American liberal tradition, its prescriptions for deeper education linked to the grounded experience of service during the transition to adulthood advance ideas and policies regarding civic virtue that should be read urgently and pondered widely." --Ira Katznelson, Columbia University
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