General knowledge is claimed to be worthless for achievement, and organised specialised knowledge, including knowing where to obtain it, decisive.
Hill's useful move was to separate knowing something from knowing where to get it, and to count the second as knowledge. The dismissal of general education is the part that the evidence on transfer and on absorptive capacity does not support: recognising which specialised knowledge you need is a general capability.
In practice
- A manager who cannot do the analysis and knows exactly whom to ask is not less useful than one who can.
- A specialist with no general grounding cannot tell when the problem has left their speciality.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is that organised specialised knowledge, including knowing where to obtain it, converts into achievement while general knowledge does not.
- In its favour
- The distinction between knowing something and knowing where to get it is a real and useful one, and it anticipates the idea of knowing how to search rather than store.
- Against it
- The dismissal of general education is the part that evidence on transfer and on absorptive capacity does not support, since recognising which specialised knowledge is needed is itself a general capacity, and the evidence offered is testimonial.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. The distinction survives better than the ranking; transfer-of-learning research finds general knowledge does considerable work that this principle denies.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- The success literature and its sceptics