This paper contributes to the debate over whether the university disciplines are the best sources of knowledge for the school curriculum. Among the problematic issues raised in the paper are the distinctions between the university disciplines on one hand and the arts, crafts, trades, and sports on the other, and the distinction between enabling the young to participate at a practical level in the activities of adult society and developing their ability to participate on a more abstract, theoretical level in formal fields of inquiry. Although examination of these issues raises doubts about the possibility of developing a general theory of knowledge, each domain of knowledge has three characteristics in common: (1) a theoretical framework; (2) a means for making perceptual contact with things in the world; and (3) a set of formulated canons of inquiry. If general education should include study of seven aspects of the world (the written, quantified, play, fabricated, natural, societal, and lived worlds), then both the university disciplines and the arts, crafts, trades, and sports must be integral parts of education, and neither the formal nor the practical can be shown to be epistemically preferable. Two pages of references and notes are provided. (PGD)