As Thick As One Short Plank

It has taken twenty eight years but finally I have understood. My slowness in getting the point might explain why I was never any good at school or went to university.

All those years ago I was obediently reading university prospectuses. Every university listed its requirements for new students. They were all pretty much the same. Except one. The University of Kent at Canterbury asked each prospective student to enclose with their application not a list of their academic achievements but a recent chest x-ray.

Of course I thought I understood. There must have been a spate of cancer deaths at the university and it was trying to cover itself by only accepting students who were demonstrably sick in the first place. Either that or it had finally realised that in the event of a fire a list of people in the building on a sheet of paper would be the first thing to burn up. Chest x-rays would help identify burnt bodies in the event of the carnage I assumed was perpetrated annually by disgruntled final exam failers.

In the years since there have been a number of debates about the nature of intelligence. Many insufficiently eminent people with chips on their shoulders have tried to pretend there are many different types of intelligence and therefore no one is more intelligent than the next person. This does of course mean that this opinion of theirs cannot be correct as it is no better than the next person's. But clearly there are different ways of measuring reasoning capacity in different areas. There is mechanical intelligence which involves being able to do D.I.Y. There is athletic intelligence which is about applying and developing innate sporting skills. And there is emotional intelligence which is all about being able discern the inclinations of hearts and respond appropriately.

The University of Kent was ahead of its time. Rather than judge its applicants on the basis of academic intelligence it judged them on the basis of emotional intelligence. The chest x-ray would show pictures of the applicant's heart and this rather than qualifications would be the guarantee of a sufficient level of emotional intelligence to attend the university.

It would be interesting to know exactly what a university level heart was expected to look like. Was it larger or smaller than a non-university heart? Smoother or rounder? Probably it was one with an interesting shape. A heart with many protrusions and a distinctive texture would indicate extraordinary emotional intelligence in different areas and therefore demonstrate a greater capacity to reach out and touch a wider number of people. This would explain why Kent was at that time a favoured university of the children of film directors. Some people have their heart on the wrong side of their body. An unusually shaped heart on the wrong side of the body is surely a sign of extraordinary emotional capacity and would probably guarantee acceptance into Kent without the need for an interview.

It is difficult to quantify what impact this concentration on emotional intelligence has had. Of course Kent is not regarded as one of the highest universities academically but this is to be expected in the circumstances. The only discernable effect of the policy has been to instill in the university a fear of following through its own principles. Surely if it believed in what it was doing it would have appointed Paul Gascoigne as a senior lecturer after his blubbing at the 1990 World Cup? How about Halle Berry after her Oscars speech? Apparently emotional intelligence is only good as long as the academically intelligent define and govern it. Does this not destroy the point? You might as well say Labour is all right as long as it is Conservative. Oh of course the electorate has been doing that for the last ten years.

There is however one important consequence of the Kent policy. For generations lecherous men have been judging women on the basis of their chests. Feminists and many others have declared this behaviour unacceptable. It is perfectly possible however that men are unconsciously assessing the emotional intelligence of women when they look at their chests. Furthermore as they can only see the outside of the chest they are demonstrating more exalted judgment than those who need to look inside. This apparently sexist practice is the logical development of the Kent policy. Once again it is demonstrated that political correctness is the last preserve of the ignorant.