Abstract

What does justice require of an educational institution? Education in a politically liberal society, I argue, serves three important functions: preparing people to participate politically in their society, equipping people to become self supporting, economically independent, contributing members of society, and augmenting people's understanding of their society's culture while exposing them to a multiplicity of potential life choices. Given these functions, what would a just educational institution look like in a politically liberal society? ;After examining several approaches to education, I offer an answer to this question based on the concept of "basic needs." First, I establish that education is a basic need in liberal societies. Second, I argue that people are entitled to have their basic needs met---that is, basic needs generate positive rights. Finally, I argue that the state is responsible for the correlative duty of satisfying the basic need of education. These results support a principle of justice, which I call educational equity. Educational equity requires that all students be equally enabled to obtain a basic education. Since the liberal state has a duty to secure its citizens' educational basic needs, I then set out to address what level of learning satisfies this obligation. Drawing on the work of Amartya Sen, I propose that basic education levels are best understood in terms of ability-relative learning thresholds that require proficiency in a specific combination of capabilities