01
The Backlash Against Artificial Intelligence
Banning the future has never been a particularly successful way to prepare students for it.
Question Everything.
Education's sacred cows are about to have a very uncomfortable day.
The Cynic's Creed
Principles, Not Platitudes.
A simple test for every policy, practice, and fashionable idea that claims to put learners first.
Evidence before ideology.
Questions before certainty.
Children before bureaucracy.
Results before excuses.
Innovation before tradition.
Truth before comfort.
Featured Essays
Read. Question. Repeat.
Essays for people who prefer difficult questions to comfortable slogans—and evidence to educational theatre.
02
Measuring Learning or Measuring Compliance?
We keep counting what is easy to count, then act surprised when it tells us very little.
03
The Pilot Project Cemetery
Schools adore innovation—right up until innovation expects the institution to change.
Educational Myths
Popular. Persistent. Wrong.
Some ideas survive because they work. Others survive because repeating them is easier than examining them.
Homework automatically improves learning.
Quantity is not quality. Completion is not comprehension.
Verdict: Needs evidence
Technology is the problem.
Tools amplify practice. They do not magically repair or ruin it.
Verdict: Convenient excuse
More testing produces better learning.
Testing measures performance. Feedback changes it.
Verdict: Category error
Books
Longer arguments. Fewer escape routes.
Ideas with enough room for evidence, context, uncomfortable implications, and the occasional sharp elbow.
The Cynical Educator
Sacred Cows & Other Bad Ideas
Featured Work
How our educational system is failing our children—and compromising their future.
Artificial intelligence. Assessment. Leadership. Innovation. The role of parents. A clear-eyed look at why education protects old assumptions and what meaningful change demands.
Explore the Books
About Michael
Michael J. Canuel, Ed.D.
Educator. Entrepreneur. Constructive troublemaker.
Michael J. Canuel, Ed.D. is an educator, entrepreneur, former CEO, international speaker, recipient of the Ordre d'excellence en éducation du Québec, co-founder of an online school in Thailand serving nearly 50,000 students, and has spent more than twenty years building businesses.
His writing challenges assumptions using research, evidence, humour, and sarcasm—because serious questions do not always require solemn delivery.
My loyalty has always been to students.
Meet Michael