# An Evil Cry explained — What’s Wrong with the World

> Chapter companion for What’s Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton.

## What happens

Chesterton attacks the modern educational fallacy that we can transmit knowledge we do not possess, arguing that the cry to 'save the children' is a panicked, opportunistic evasion that abandons the fathers. He insists that education is the transmission of truth from teacher to pupil, not a mere drawing out of innate faculties, and that we cannot save children if we cannot save ourselves.

## Themes in this chapter

### Education and Authority

Chesterton critiques the modern educational fallacy that knowledge can be transmitted without the teacher possessing it, defending the necessity of authority and tradition in teaching.

### The Medical Fallacy in Sociology

The chapter extends the medical fallacy to education, arguing that treating society as a patient in panic leads to the desperate cry to 'save the children' while abandoning the fathers.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown

The narrator argues against the fashionable fallacy in education and the cry to 'save the children'.

## Key lines

> The fashionable fallacy is that by education we can give people something that we have not got.

The popular but mistaken belief is that education can impart to others what we ourselves lack.

_Chesterton identifies the core fallacy of modern educational theory._

> I mean the cry, 'Save the children.' It is, of course, part of that modern morbidity that insists on treating the State (which is the home of man) as a sort of desperate expedient in time of panic.

The slogan 'Save the children' reflects a sick modern tendency to view the State as a mere emergency measure during a crisis.

_Chesterton condemns the panicked, opportunistic approach to social reform._

> Education is only truth in a state of transmission; and how can we pass on truth if it has never come into our hand?

Education is simply the passing on of truth; we cannot transmit what we have never possessed.

_The central argument that teachers must first possess the truth they seek to impart._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_s_wrong_with_the_world_se/chapters/v-an-evil-cry
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_s_wrong_with_the_world_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_s_wrong_with_the_world_se/chapters