Abstract
In recent years, the field of democratic education has placed increased emphasis on the role of university courses in supplying students with the requisite skills for civic engagement. Deliberative democrats imagine citizenship as participatory and consensus-seeking, guided by the exercise of public reason. However, this expectation does not describe the civic practices engaged by the majority population, including those of political science graduates nor the possibilities available to most citizens in complex democracies. I suggest that the civic skill most in need of cultivation is not consensus-seeking but what Arendt described as judgment. This paper offers an alternative account of publicity in the public sphere and illustrates its pernicious effects on deliberations in the classroom and beyond. I propose judgment as an alternative that leverages the positive features of deliberation towards a more practicable, reasonable end.