The need for narrowness

Education, Chesterton argues in part IV of 'What's wrong with the world', unavoidably uses authority. The only question then becomes: which authority? The authority of the Pope, or of the House of Lords, or of Mrs. Grundy? In England, Chesterton argues, there are no uneducated people. There are merely people wrongly educated, by the various influences around them. The English poor know too much, not too little: they are ' rather deafened and bewildered with raucous and despotic advice. They are not like sheep without a shepherd. They are more like one sheep whom twenty-seven shepherds are shouting at.' The result can be disastrous: 'If they cannot learn enough about law and citizenship to please the teacher, they learn enough about them to avoid the policeman. If they will not learn history forwards from the right end in the history books, they will learn it backwards from the wrong end in the party newspapers.'
There are so many influences possible on our children; there is a great need for narrowness or focus. 'They say that nowadays the creeds are crumbling; I doubt it, but at least the sects are increasing; and education must now be sectarian education, merely for practical purposes. Out of all this throng of theories it must somehow select a theory; out of all these thundering voices it must manage to hear a voice'.