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Benjamin Myers
Professor Kramer
CAS 138T
3 March 2014
Deliberation Evaluation
Whether it be training students for the workforce or providing an environment for
discovery and critical thinking, universities play an important role in society. But by being such
an essential part of the community, universities like Penn State faces the difficult question
concerning, How should higher education help us create the society we want? (Kettering
Foundation). With no obvious solution, Penn State turned to deliberation. According to
Dictionary.com, deliberation is the careful consideration before decision, but it is much more
than that. It is a collaborative effort of the community to gain further knowledge in order to reach
the solution. It combines opinions, emotions, facts, and critical thinking and eventually leads to
mutual understanding. So my class participated in a deliberation in order to answer this
challenging question, but the end results were very mixed. Overall, I would say the deliberation
was well organized, respectful, and had plenty of participation, but lacked enough alternative
solutions to establish a final solution. But to fully analyze the successes and failures of our
deliberation, I will discuss the class social process, the information students presented, and the
solutions we came up with for various options.
First of all, I thought the social process of the deliberation was phenomenal, yet still
contained a few flaws. On the first day of the forum, we established a list of rules, one of which
stated that everyone was encouraged to participate. I can confidently say that all members
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spoke at least once during the five days of the deliberation. I will admit, some members spoke
more than others, but these small imbalances did not result in members cutting one another off or
someone completely dominating the discussion. I attribute this success to our hand raising
system, which prevented members from speaking out of turn, kept the deliberation respectful,
and allowed the moderators to choose quieter students. Often times, deliberations can morph into
debate, but hand raising kept order. But I think some students spoke up in order to end
uncomfortable silence. Although this is perfectly fine etiquette and keeps the discussion going,
there are still positive elements to silence. Silence gives other members time to process the
information and then compose a thoughtful statement. But regardless, I thought the speaking
distribution was well balanced and courteous.
Besides good social protocol, I was impressed with the comprehensibility of the
communication, which kept the participants informed. I believe having moderators who
summarize the main points and the groups admirable listening skills helped establish the
excellent communication. Also, disagreement was always handled respectfully and often
apologetically, thus maintaining confidence throughout the group. Now when there was an issue
with clarity, the forum members were not afraid to acknowledge the problem. I remember when
Alex asked a question as the moderator, but the group had a little trouble understanding the
question. So Steven spoke up and asked Alex to rephrase his question, and the deliberation was
able to continue on from there.
So our class possessed great deliberation etiquette, but the actual content was subpar,
making it difficult to find a solution to the problem. On the first day of class we went around the
room and everyone stated their personal stakes, but the prominent idea that emerged was that
most members wanted to make their own choices in life. For example, STEMs majors did not
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want to take classes unrelated to their fields, and liberal arts majors did not want to be forced to
switch majors. This tendency against change would be a reoccurring theme, but is also
understandable since people attend college to pursue the career of their desire. On the bright side,
this mutual value prevented debate, but also prevented diversity of ideas. Still, there were other
values each classmate held, and they excelled at expressing their values, but failed to
acknowledge others values. For instance, when we were considering adding more language
classes, no one asked a question like What do those who value cultural awareness think about
this solution? (Kettering Foundation). Such a question might have diversified solutions, but we
sadly did not journey down that path.
Also, members of the class were very willing to express their emotions and opinions on
each point, but failed to provide any facts to support their claims. One moment that really stood
out was during the discussion of cutting funding to Penn State branch campuses. I remember one
classmate explaining all the opportunities it offered the students at their high school, and this
experience helped sway the rest of the group away from the idea. This is of course common
under such a topic since education plays a personal role in our lives. Now even though the
emotional content like this was abundant, the presentation of facts was lacking. We made broad
generalities but hard facts and statistics were not present. I thought some statistics could have
been beneficial during the discussion concerning online class. Most members did not want to
switch from classroom lectures to online lectures because of their emotional attachment to the
traditional classroom, but if we would have had statistics on the costs of an online class
compared to that of traditional class, the opinion might have shifted. I believe the lack of facts
hindered critical thinking, so for the next deliberation I hope we bring more research to the table.
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Finally, solutions did arise from the groups ideas, but the solutions were limited in
number due the members holding similar values This was evident when discussing if students
should take more STEMs courses. Of course, this went against the groups ideology of free
choice and almost everyone described their hatred for the option. I will give credit to Alice and
those who went along with this new idea that helpful classes may be worth limiting our freedom,
but at the end of the day the class stuck to its original values. Eventually an alternative solution
was presented by Sachira. He said that promoting STEMs should be done during elementary
school or high school. Now I personally love this idea, but the group became too attached to it.
Also, one of the problems was that the solution did not address the question of how higher
education should create the society we want. Thus, it became difficult to let go and which
hindered the creation of new solutions.
Although the solutions were limited, the team did manage to create a substantial list of
pros and cons to the solutions. One of the best examples at examining pros and cons was the two
tier system for STEMs courses, with one slow paced class or fast paced class. The positive
aspects were that it would encourage those who struggle with math and science to consider a
STEMs major, while keeping in-depth content for the more knowledgeable students. Then one
member pointed out that it would be problematic because the classes would hold the same
weight but one was easier than the other. This balancing act of pros and cons helped us to
dismiss the idea, while acknowledging both sides of the argument. Still, the masses seemed to
place more weight on the negatives than the positives in most cases, and because of this we never
came up with a solution.
We started this deliberation in order to answer the question of How should higher
education help us create the society we want?, but at the end of the day, we did not have a clear
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solution (Kettering Foundation). Despite our well organized and well-mannered group, we kept
too much focus on freedom of choice so few alternative solutions were developed. And on the
fifth day, I summarized this issue by explaining how we all are intelligent students who have
been benefiting from the system, so it becomes difficult to come up with actions the school
should take when we see no need for change. But despite our failure, we did learn about the
process of deliberation and the value it holds for furthering understanding. And best of all, we
recognized why the deliberation took this particular form. The only thing we can do now is learn
from our mistakes, repeat our triumphs, and continue to work together to try and solve societies
issues.














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Work cited
Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Rhetoric and Civic Life. 2013 ed. Boston: Pearson
Learning Solutions, 2013. Print.
"Deliberation." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, 2014. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
Kettering Foundation. Shaping Our Future: How Should Higher Education Help Us Create the
Society We Want? Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 14 Aug. 2012. Web. 2 March.
2014.