Cafe Scientifique is a new venture by the University of Reading as part of its public education outreach. For years the University has run public lectures in the evening in the Palmer Building, in the same auditorium where Reading Film Theatre shows its arthouse movies. These lectures have covered a wide variety of fascinating topics and been delivered with an equally wide variety of skill by the eminent speakers. Just because you are the top expert in the world on Italy under Mussolini does not guarantee that you'll deliver a scintillating lecture on the subject, as I found out last March. As the lectures are all free, it is ungracious to complain and impossible to demand your money back.Unlike the public lectures, Cafe Scientifique is held off campus - well, 200 yards off campus in one of the bars at the Queen's Head pub in Christchurch Road. This has the advantage of being less formal than the main public lectures where the lecturer is out front at a traditional lectern and the audience is in banked rows of cinema-style seats. At the pub we were all packed in close to the speakers.
The disadvantage was the limited seating for the crowd who squeezed in to listen to two speakers on stem cell research. One of them was Dr Che Connon, a researcher in stem cell research specialising in using adult stem cells for treating eyes damaged by 
disease or accidents, such as having corrosive liquids thrown in the face. The other was David Oderberg, originally from Australia, now Professor of Philosophy at Reading. He has lectured and written extensively on the moral implications of bioethical research.The evening held two stunning surprises. The first was Professor Oderberg's ethical approach. For much of his talk he sounded as if he was channelling Pope John Paul 2 on the sanctity of human life, destruction of embryos and so on. I had never heard of the guy before that evening although he lives only a quarter of a mile from Reading Prison and hence St James Church. See the attached interview with Prof Oderberg for a secular philosopher's views on some of the key aspects of morality. No wonder I had never heard of him; his opinions would not be welcome in the BBC or most British TV or newspapers.
The second surprise came in the shape of an American doctor who stood up in the question and answer session to declare himself a supporter of our old friend Jack Kevorkian and a long term campaigner in the USA for abortion rights. In a somewhat incoherent challenge to Professor Oderberg, he seemed to imply that universities were for 'intellectual' pursuits and lectures based on beliefs were somehow off limits in an ethical debate. I may be doing him an injustice, but he was almost a caricature of the moral liberationist so evident in much of the US and British media and parts of academia.
The Queens Head may sound like a bizarre venue for an educational initiative, but then Christchurch Road compresses the extremes of the British education system into a very small space. At its east end, less than 200 yards from the pub, you find the huge green campus of the University of Reading. Less than two hundred yards to the west of the pub there used to be Reading Alternative School. This sounds like a chic and radical school, with an imaginative curriculum and innovative teaching methods. Er, not quite. You went to Reading Alternative School only when there was no alternative for you. Your totally disruptive, violent or depraved behaviour meant that even the worst schools in town had washed their hands of you, but the luckless Local Education Authority still had a legal obligation to 'educate' you until the age of 16. A friend taught at this school for a few months and was lucky to escape uninjured when a pupil threw a pair of scissors at her. She is a really lovely and compassionate person and explained the horrendous backgrounds of many pupils; parental neglect and abandonment, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, drink and drug abuse, mental illness. The name was proof that local British government, like the national government, has no shortage of bullshit merchants.I use the past tense because Reading Alternative School no longer exists. I walked past some weeks ago and Phoenix College had taken its place. My cynical sister suggested that the name was inspired by the 'students' torching the earlier school, but the buildings looked much the same. Plainly the bullshit merchants had paid a return visit. They must have trained the staff well because shortly afterwards an article appeared in the local paper.
Reading Alternative School might as well have been on Pluto for all the press coverage it received. Every other school in town had newspaper articles describing its academic achievements, sporting successes, drama productions, musical concerts, fundraising events, etc. No parent would ever boast about their child going to Reading Alternative School. Now at last an article described a charity fundraising event at the Phoenix College. For the benefit of bemused local citizens,who had not a clue where this 'college' was or what it taught, a staff member explained that the pupils 'had many things going on in their lives'. It was like 'La Vie en rose' covering Edith Piaf's World War 2 career.Walk less than 300 yards west along Christchurch Road from Phoenix College and you come to the junior department of Abbey School. You go to the Abbey School if you
are female and your parents can afford £8,000 ($16,000+) a year in fees. Sally Taylor, who presents the local news on BBC South Today, went to Abbey School. In fact an astonishing number of TV presenters went to Abbey School. The Chief Vetinary Officer in Britain also appeared on TV quite a lot during the recent foot and mouth disease panic.....and she went to Abbey School. The pupils at Phoenix College probably have a better chance of flying to the moon than going to Oxford or becoming TV presenters, even when the school leaving age is raised to 18 as the Government plans. But the Local Education Authority will have the pleasure of educating them and keeping their teachers alive for even longer.William Murphy
