It struck me a while ago whilst reading a story of the Emperor’s new Clothes to my daughter, that we teach our children that to protect ourselves by staying silent is a bad thing; that it leaves us ‘without clothes’ and causes us to make foolish and stupid mistakes.

It was put to me however, that I have the message all wrong – and that the message of this story is not that we should be honest and face up to life…  It was suggested to me that the ‘real’ message of this story is that to be open and honest like the children in the story is to be naive, and that only children are silly enough to speak out.

I must be naive (honest) and say that this reading of the story hit me like a brick…  I had absolutely no concept of this message, no inkling that a moral such as this could be taken from this story – and perhaps that explains a lot; both about the world and my interaction with it.  Do most of us really believe that we should simply shut up and put up?  Is it really naive and child-like to speak out?

It would certainly explain a lot…