I remember my first high school Geography lesson. In hindsight, it was quite the formative moment. I still recall my teacher, Mr MacDonald, describing Geography as being a ‘jack of all trades’ subject. Some twenty-five years on, as a Geography teacher, I think that the generalist nature of the discipline is what attracted me to and maintained my interest in the subject.
Before I became a teacher, the generalist nature of Geography served me well in industry. Straight out of university, my Geography degree got me a place on the commercial graduate programme at BP. They hired three Commercial grads that year in Exploration & Production; two of us were geographers (the third was an engineer). I was never quite sure what I brought to the table knowledge-wise. It was probably this impostor syndrome which contributed to me leaving after just two years. Looking back now (there is that benefit of hindsight again), the common feedback I got from colleagues could all broadly be defined as being a generalist: I could bring together specialists from different backgrounds with competing priorities; I could grasp lots of the different technical aspects at a sufficient enough level because I was used to dabbling in many neighbouring disciplines; I could bring all those specialisms and colleagues together into a narrative and communicate it.
As a local councillor, the same skills proved useful again. Most politicians are generalists, to varying degrees. Few have specialisms on the topics which they have to make decisions on, or certainly not most of them. The same is true of many public servants, who rotate through roles during their careers, not always specialising.
These personal anecdotes serve to illustrate the point that being a generalist is no bad thing – academically or professionally. When reading about the topic of generalists, it is probably worth noting that it refers primarily to the body of knowledge you possess and a skill-set which develops in tandem with the knowledge. While there is an overlap with the idea of transferable skills, I don’t think they are one and the same. In particular, I would argue that the knowledge/skills relationship is cyclical – each supports the development of the other.
There is an interesting Forbes article on the benefits of being a generalist from a career perspective. David Epstein has also written a book about the topic more broadly. Despite the growing case for being a generalist most policy, especially education policy, still favours specialisation. As part of my role, I find myself advising teenagers choosing courses at the age of 14 and 16. These course, to some extend, start to close doors and shape career paths. Not irreversibly so, but even the act of making choices, of ‘dropping subjects’, influences students’ psychology. It implies that specialisation is the natural order of things. And while we need specialists, we need generalists too, and there are plenty of career options for those kids who don’t want to specialise early.
Commonplace 