You may know that I have signed up again to complete my two philosophy courses. One is on Ethics. The other is Epistemology.
The University of London is distributed across the city and the Ethics course is now held at Pollitt College in Streatham. (They changed the location of the classes without notice. What I did not know was that the authorities had altered the syllabus as well.) It was an unnerving experience there. I travelled in yesterday, and it took me an hour and a half to get there from Ealing!
The College is a vast collection of post-war buildings of varying designs and sizes. I entered the central area to be confronted by hordes of people trying to get in. A uniformed figure was shouting "Get in line according to your colour!"
This was apartheid of the classic kind! With a couple of others I made my protest. The official was unmoved. "Get in line according to the colour of your tickets, I mean," he ordered sternly. I was a purple. The purple queue was by the wall and I moved towards it. I saw a young man with a purple ticket going the wrong way. I manoeuvred him into the correct queue. (We purples have got to stick together.)
We progressed to the front and found ourselves in a large crushed area with all the other colours. (The separation had been for ticket inspection purposes only.) We examined large boards on which the course topics and locations were lists. There were eight titles and locations for Ethics! I moved to the "Enquiries" counter. When I reached the front of the queue I was confronted by a comfortable, relaxed, motherly lady in a blue and grey cardigan. This was Elspeth Hentles.
Elspeth listened to my query with a happy, compassionate smile. Then she said "We do seem to have got ourselves into a pickle, haven't we? On occasions like this we really ought to put our thinking caps on. The answer's there if you'll only look for it." And with that she turned to the next person: "Yes, dear . . ."
I decided to choose the first Ethics course on the list and look for my name on the register. I was lucky at last! I made my way to a large room on the third floor where some fifty people were working at twenty-five shared drawing boards. I was about to withdraw with apologies when a small man with stubbly ginger hair bustled forward.
"You're late!" he said. "I'm sorry but it was essential to start on time. You'd better work with Mr Pleiades. Back row. Better give him some help. He speaks no English yet."
"I have come for an Ethics course," I explained.
"Yes, yes," he answered impatiently. "Have you read the set books yet? You'll need knowledge of these to make progress. We're just finishing off charting, in colour, the ranges of disciplines involved in analysing various ethical schools. First, I suppose I'd better get you registered."
He reached for a list. "Can I see your purple ticket? For your number." I said there must be some mistake. I said to Pleiades that I was just a novice. The ginger haired man laughed, as did some of the nearer students. "They are all novices!" he cried. "This is only the second session. And all the other classes are at the same stage. On the Ethics course we believe in equality."
Then he read my ticket and regarded me gravely. "Look, Mr Blunstone, I don't know where you've come from but you've made an unauthorised entry. This ticket has not been stamped. Before registration, or anything, you should return to the Entrance to have your presence officially authenticated." I decided to leave.
On the way to the Entrance, I tried another Ethics lecture room. Here, the whole experience was different. There were some thirty young students with maniacally happy expressions on their faces singing the Coue Mantra. "Every day and in every way I feel better and better." They were led from the front by Elspeth Hentles. I shut the door and made my way back to the Entrance.
There I explained my unauthorsed entry, producing my unstamped purple ticket. An untidy woman in a greasy uniform and with henna dyed hair responded. "Don't let it get to you, Corsets!" she said, "As long as you've paid." She smudge-stamped my ticket and directed me to a third lecture room. "Yus! Jus' the place for yew. Somethin' ter get yer teef in. Don' ferget yer calculator."
I found the third room where everyone appeared to be engrossed in an exercise. I explained my positino to the scholarly invigilator of this academic concentration. He welcomed me politely, completing all my registration documentation as we conversed.
"As you know," he said, "this is the Jeremy Bentham Room and the main focus of the course is numerical ethics: Quantitative Aspects of Moral Philosophy. Have you brought a hand calculator? No matter, because tonight's session is almost completed. Perhaps next week you can manage to bring some sort of computational device . . ." he nodded towards a student who was calculating on his fingers the relationship between geometric solids and Platonic Forms. It was Pleiades again, grinning happily.
I had had enough. I shot down to Reception and in two minutes had transferred to Wine Appreciation (with Massage optional)!
Yours
