‘A National Service bill could contain numerous caveats in the fine print to coerce the public to obey.’
“We’ll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities.”
Schools that require service as part of the educational experience create improved learning environments and serve as resources for their communities. Moreover, in his Plan, he promises to develop national guidelines for service-learning and community service programs, thus not leaving the content of service programs to the states.
The Volokh Conspiracys Jim Lindgren: it would be the public schools that would impose federal standards of coerced service on each child as part of their requirements for graduation. For students, service would be involuntary. Even for the public schools, their participation would be only nominally voluntary for how many public schools can survive without federal assistance?