Free general knowledge quiz: Test your knowledge

How much do you know about the speed of light? Or the Punic Wars? Your general knowledge counts here. How do you rate? (Part 326)

General knowledge is understood as the knowledge that people with average educational opportunities can acquire. This includes not only the knowledge that children and young people acquire through upbringing and education. It also includes knowledge that is acquired involuntarily, for example, through media consumption.

General education describes the most important knowledge and skills a person needs to actively participate in as many areas of modern society as possible. General knowledge should form the foundation for every person's education. Both terms, general knowledge and general education, are vague and not uniformly defined. In colloquial language, the terms are often used interchangeably.

Put simply: general education presupposes general knowledge. Once general knowledge is present, a person still needs their intellect to understand this knowledge in context and to apply it when in doubt. In psychology, general knowledge consists of more or less everyday facts stored in long-term memory. To develop this general knowledge, a person needs a certain degree of intelligence.

The terms "general education" and "common knowledge" originate from the Age of Enlightenment. At that time, it was recognized that the entire knowledge of civilization is not contained in a single book. Furthermore, the quantity of knowledge is not dependent on its quality. Specialized knowledge is of only limited use or value to each individual. However, every person needs a concrete foundation of experiences, insights, and values to be able to use specialized knowledge meaningfully.

During the Enlightenment, the encyclopedists attempted to collect all available knowledge and make it accessible to the general public – a revolutionary undertaking, because until then education had been reserved only for certain, mostly upper classes of the population.

If general knowledge is defined as an educational canon, it depends greatly on the respective country, culture, individual educational level, and social environment. In this country, general knowledge includes knowledge in the fields of politics, economics, geography, history, language, literature, technology, natural sciences, and art.