You all know the story of Sleeping Beauty. The bad fairy, not having been invited to the festival, decrees that the Princess shall prick herself on a spindle as soon as she reaches her eighteenth birthday and sink into a deathlike sleep. The King, her father, immediately banishes all spinning wheels from his country in order to protect the Princess from this doom. Yet in the end she finds in a hidden corner a spinning wheel that had been overlooked and sinks into the deep sleep out of which only Prince Charming can awaken her.
The modern mother will find the attitude of the King very foolish. He had eighteen years before him. Instead of banishing the spinning wheels he should have surrounded his daughter with them and made her so expert a spinner that it would have been simply impossible for her to hurt herself. The modern mother knows that protection is not the right answer to the challenges and dangers of life. The right answer is education.
Especially now in the summer months, when children are freed from the supervision of the schools and enticing playtime lures them into new and delightful enterprises, this question of protection and education stands in the foreground of interest. Every mother has to decide for herself what is better. To forbid her child to indulge in amusements that seem dangerous or to educate him to do things so expertly and skillfully that the danger is overcome.
To protect the child may be easier for the moment, but in the end protection is bound to break down. Education is by far more advisable though it takes more effort, more energy, more character. The modern mother disdains the ineffective methods of the fairy-tale King
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
