It also requires the civic skills of public talk, public judgment, thinking, imagination, and the courage to act. Briefly, public talk requires that citizens have the ability to talk, listen, and act together for common purposes. What citizens learn from talking with each other are new ways of relating and working with others. Public talk is prerequisite for public judgment, which requires both thinking and imagining. Political judgment requires the ability to think together with others about what the right public course of action should be.
Public judgment is the capacity to think with others about collective lives and actions.
It requires the ability to talk or imagine different viewpoints and perspectives with others. College and university communities are in the special position of deciding what responsible citizenship requires in a democratic society and the skills that are required for it. To begin this process, conversations on campus must address these issues and how the curriculum can best inculcate them. Colleges and universities can help students to refine and expand their notions of citizenship and the common world through the classroom and how it is structured, by providing opportunities for experiential learning, and in creating a campus community where all constituencies can think together about their shared lives. The challenge, however, is not about what kind of curriculum, governance, or extracurricular activities are in place.