What is the moral of The Emperor's New Clothes?

What that actually means

The usual reading is that adults are fools and children see clearly. Andersen's tale is stranger and funnier than that. Every adult in it can see perfectly well. The minister sees an empty loom. The emperor sees an empty loom. The whole street sees a man with no clothes on. What none of them can do is be the first to say it out loud. The child is not wiser than they are. The child simply has no post to lose.

What happens in the story

An emperor who cares about nothing but clothes is sold a suit that only clever, capable people can see. His minister cannot see it. Nor can the emperor. Nor can anybody in the city, and every single one of them decides to say nothing about it, until a small child at the front of the crowd says the obvious thing out loud.

Questions to ask afterwards

The lesson lands better when a child works it out themselves.

1. Everybody in this story can see there is no cloth. Why do you think not one of them says so?
2. The old minister had worked for the emperor for forty years. What did he think would happen if he told the truth?
3. Why is it a child who says it, and not one of the grown-ups?
4. At the end the emperor keeps walking instead of stopping. Was that brave, or was it silly?
5. Have you ever agreed with everybody else about something when you did not really agree? What made you do it?