Sunday was a lazy day. Calypso read me quite a lot of Pope - Magister loved Pope, for the way he seems to roll off the tongue completely naturally despite the rhyme and meter - and Rochester, made more famous recently by the film The Libertine. I read up on the Indian concept of rasas, in the first academic essay I have ever loved. It explains me to myself - the way I enjoy fiction and the way I write it, I discover, originates in India. Who knew? If I have time I'll explain it to you.

I'm becoming disillusioned with Swap Bot. Getting parcels from all over the world will always be fun. The whole point of art cards is they involve art, surely? But so far all I have received is craft. As a good disciple of Wilde, I believe things should be beautiful for their own sake - art alone, art without message, and accordingly I get quite irritable at Galactica's "War In Iraq" season. And yet totally meaningless is just as bad. And that's what I keep getting - art without feeling, images which do not invoke any emotion at all. It's rather a shame, and I'm starting to look elsewhere for swap sources.

I'm devouring films as quickly as possible, alarmed by only being at 40 for the whole year. I know I've missed some - I always do - and I know I went through miserable no-film stretches, and had Doctor Who demanding my time - but this still seems very low. I want to beat Rob's total for this year, even if he no longer blogs and therefore I won't know what it is.

Finally, a question for you. I read in the paper that there are movements underfoot to prevent BNP members from becoming teachers. It's a sticky issue and one that has been mulling in my mind. Please comment and help me figure it out.

On principle, I don't think anyone should be barred on account of their beliefs - but I still don't want them anywhere near my children. Which of course, is exactly what BNP parents would say on hearing a black man was to be made teacher of their kids.

I think taking one group of people and saying "they are wrong, period" is a dangerous thing to do - because it bars understanding. No human act is wholly irrational - it comes from somewhere. I think its giving them too much credit to say that goodness or genius can be understood, but that bad behaviour cannot be. Look at these two statements:

"That is a wicked child"

"That child is misbehaving because his mother used to spoil him"

I know why the second child is bad, so I know how to help him behave - I also know how to bring up a third child more successfully. To compare: "That racist is wrong" is a position I'm uncomfortable having. I'd much rather know why she holds those beliefs, what in her upbringing or mindset has differed from mine. Because understanding offers solutions. And this further: I know had I had that upbringing, or a different combo of chemicals in my brain, I might feel that way too.

Are the racists right? No, bear with me a moment. I'm liberal but for the grace of growing up under liberal parents. Had I grown up, say, in the Bible belt, as a Muslim, in a hippy commune, in Jersey - my conception of right and wrong would be fundamentally different. One of the issues philosopher's get themselves in a twist about is whether there is an absolute morality. If there is, I actually think discrimination is one of the things that can never be right - even worse than things like murder, which can be justified as self defence. Judging an entire group of people on account of their biology can be understood but not excused.

Yet this line of thought genuinely creeps me out. Of course, maybe alt-me would have broken away from her limiting background and bravely stand up to the opinions of her peers - but I doubt it. My core beliefs have been drummed into me since birth. Just as, say, the kids of racist parents will grow up with a distinct suspicion towards whatever they're not. It's not their fault, it's just genetic bad luck, and it frequently makes me wonder whether the principles I hold most dear are being judged by others around me, or incorrect by the standards of everyone else. Am I right? By my own morality, yes, but if there is an absolute morality, can I work out where I stand in relation to it?

With all this in mind, does it even matter? Political correctness, personal freedom, civil liberties - when our children are at stake? After the bomb trouble, there was institutionalised racism in the British police force because there was a 99% chance new threats arising would be from the Muslim population. Grossly unfair to the 98% of British Muslims who didn't want to hurt anyone and thought the whole matter was appalling, but their sensibilities were subsumed to the cause judged as greater - preventing any more explosions. Similarly, here we are judging between fairness to a disreputable group of people and fairness to our children. Surely if there is a reason to discriminate, this is it? We discriminate against paedophiles in our schools too. Yet I was against ID cards - I didn't think public safety was more important that civil liberties - and if you bar the BNP one day, then who will it be next? Slippery, slippery slope.

Eve identified, correctly, that there are more subtle ways of discriminating than merely passing on your politics. In the classroom, you could easily privilege your white pupils, ignore or make unwanted everyone else, and at that malleable age such ideas would stick. Congratulations on breeding a generation of bullies. As a good liberal parent, I don't want my children exposed to an influence like that - and so the cycle starts again, of children being fundamentally moulded not by right and wrong, but by their parents ideas of it.

Tricky, tricky, tricky. Tell me what you think.