Professor Verba states that two categories of the Core curriculum are social analysis and moral reasoning. Professor Verba defines a good citizen as someone who is both a good social scientist as well as a good moral reasoner. "What do I mean by moral reasoning? We as teachers do not teach morality — that that is right, or that is right — we teach moral reasoning. We teach citizens to think about their values; to think about the relationship between their values to various kinds of public policies, to various kinds of political systems…."

Sociologist Max Weber (1864 - 1920) distinguished between an ethic of absolute ends — held by people who know what is right and go out and do it, regardless of the consequences, and an ethic of responsibility — not a particular goal, but an ethic that says that you should be responsible when you think about your goals and what you want to achieve. To teach students to be good citizens is to teach them to be good social scientists, and to teach them to be good moral reasoners.

How does one deal with the real issues that come up in class? Professor Verba describes his commitment to keeping an “open” classroom by using teaching techniques which "do not take sides, but show how silly all of the sides are." When there are debates in class, Professor Verba often joins the side of the minority. "Our job is to analyze why people believe what they believe, which is a way to come to greater understanding on the nature of conflict in a society…. My job is to make students into citizen analysts, and not to indoctrinate them."