Knowledge is not a single homogeneous thing: Polanyi's distinction between explicit knowledge (articulable, transferable through language) and tacit knowledge (embodied, practice-dependent, only partially articulable) maps a fundamental difference in how knowing is held and transmitted. Cultural knowledge — the shared understanding embedded in practices, rituals, roles, and institutions — is a third category that is neither purely explicit nor individually tacit but distributed across a community and its forms of life. Education that attends only to explicit knowledge is systematically underdeveloping the knowing that matters most.
Each step builds on the last.