This document considers the term ‘general knowledge’ and asks what it really means, how it is used and what is its purpose.
Recently I was reviewing some work on knowledge, in particular, a list of five terms that I had intended to be descriptive representations of types or levels of knowledge to be used in an interview framework. Two of the terms contained the term ‘general knowledge’. As I considered the use of the system in a real interview it occurred that an interviewee might ask, what do you mean by ‘general knowledge’. Regrettably it also occurred that I did not have a good answer to that question. Like many other people, I use the term ‘general knowledge’ as if everyone else must know what it means because it is so widely used. I used several sources to look up the answer to the question posed by the thought interviewee but was unable to find a clear and concise answer. In fact, I did not really find any answer at all.
I have spent rather a lot of time defining my views on what knowledge actually is, so I don’t intend to repeat this here. The word ‘general’ however is significant in this analysis. A dictionary (I always have Microsoft Bookshelf to hand) will confirm that general means not special or more relevantly, not restricted or specialised. So general knowledge is not specific knowledge. General also means to relate to the whole or most, so could general knowledge relate to all knowledge but not anything specific? Are these positions contradictory? General also means widespread so general knowledge could mean knowledge that is commonly known. If this were so then a better term for it would be ‘common knowledge’.
General knowledge then, could mean knowledge that is very well known or known by nearly everyone. This must restrict general knowledge to relatively few things if one considers how diverse and dispersed the population of the world is. Or is general knowledge confined within special boundaries so that general knowledge in the UK is different from general knowledge in China. If this is the case then how big are the boundaries? To say that general knowledge is knowledge that is generally known is of little use unless one defines the place where the knowledge is expected to be generally known.
With the boundaries issue addressed, do we mean knowledge that is generally known or knowledge that should be generally known? If it is the former then some census of knowledge needs to be taken in order to identify general knowledge. This census would need to be carried out regularly because the things that would be known by most people changes over time. For example, it is only relatively recently that most people in some areas know how to use a mobile phone. If it is the latter then who decides what should be generally known? During my search for a definition of general knowledge I did come across lists of topics that were said to be core knowledge and they in turn were sometimes referred to as general knowledge. In these cases, some authority had decided what everyone should know and the boundary issue extended to the influence area of that authority.
The previous discussion could be on the wrong track however. General knowledge could have little to do with what people either do or should know and it could really relate to knowledge that is not specific. This may mean that there are certain things about motor vehicles that may be general knowledge but the detail in say mechanics would be specific and not general knowledge. It may be general knowledge to know that most cars have four wheels but specific knowledge to know how an engine actually transmits power to the wheels. There are implications with this view of general knowledge also. This view really consigns general knowledge to knowledge of isolated facts. In other words, if people know why things were the way they were then this would be encroaching on the area of specific knowledge. This view makes general knowledge a series of quiz questions where the expectation is that an answer is known but there is no expectation that anything else is known about the topic in question. This view also makes the size of general knowledge very large. There are a lot of things that one could know the answer to without knowing anything else about the topic.
The term is used in everyday conversation with expressions like, how good is your general knowledge? Organisations use the term during recruitment for instance, requires a good level of general knowledge. Politicians may use the term to state that the level of general knowledge is declining under the current education policy. Educationalists may use the term to state that primary education should focus more on general knowledge.
I have constructed the statements above from what I believe to be typical of the way that the term is used. Some may disagree with my generalisation and I apologise for not conducting a more rigorous study of the way that the term is used. Given that all or at least some of the summary is correct it is not difficult to spot the problem with the use of the term. The problem relates to the lack of a clear and universally understood definition of what knowledge is. Unfortunately, without this clarity, the statements are not far short of meaningless. The odd thing is that since everyone will probably think that they know what the term means then when the term is used in conversation with questions for instance, then it is likely that answers will be given. For example, how good is your general knowledge; oh, actually quite good. This hides the issue that the questioner and the answerer may not actually share a common definition of the term so the information conveyed may be false.
Some organisations use the term in ways that cause other concerns. For example, the candidate should have a good level of general knowledge of computer systems. Is it valid to use the term general knowledge and then to specify more precisely what the knowledge should refer to? This excludes all of the rest of what may be classed as general knowledge. It is difficult to see how this term can easily be separated from specific knowledge. The use here would probably come about because those defining the entry requirements for candidates do not really know what those requirements are.
If I were to be unkind about the purpose of this term I would say that it is there so that people can talk about knowledge requirement, level, achievement etc, without having to define what they are talking about. In other words, it means what I want it to mean as I make this statement even though I don’t yet know what I want it to mean.
Less unkindly and probably more objectively, the term general knowledge is a universal term that refers to things that people can be expected to know. It is a blanket term used to cover the knowledge expectations in others when ordinary, non specific conversation is undertaken. There is less justification for its use in a recruitment context. There is probably very little justification for its use in an educational or political context. This is because of the lack of a universally accepted and clear definition for the term.
So the term general knowledge can be useful in a social context to help people establish a common framework for social conversation. Taking the term further into business, education and politics would require a more careful definition and general agreement that the definition is the correct one.