26 Terms Modern Education Can’t Stop Misusing
A satirical inventory of once-serious words now stretched, softened, and repurposed beyond recognition in the AI-saturated language of modern education.
My new book, The Subversive Art of a Classical Education: Reclaiming the Mind in an Age of Speed, Screens, and Skill-Drills, is now available on Amazon. This book is the culmination of years spent leading a classical school and witnessing firsthand how tried and true perennial practices of learning offer the most powerful resistance to the forces fragmenting our children’s minds and souls.
Get your copy on Amazon today.
1. Student-Centered: Adult judgment carefully removed from the learning process.
2. Best Practices: Whatever everyone else is doing, preferably without asking why.
3. Alignment: The appearance of coherence achieved through shared templates.
4. Personalized Learning: The same assignment, delivered through different fonts.
5. Critical Thinking: Disagreeing with confidence, regardless of preparation.
6. Innovative: New, untested, and mandatory.
7. Innovation Lab: A room with movable furniture.
8. Agency: The freedom to choose poorly.
9. Inclusive: Everyone is welcome, as long as no one disagrees.
10. Safe: Free from challenge, discomfort, or difficult ideas.
11. Empowerment: Responsibility without authority.
12. Data: Numbers we like.
13. Transparency: Carefully curated openness.
14. Progress: Change, regardless of direction.
15. Freedom: Pre-approved choices within a narrow range.
16. Accessibility: Simplification framed as moral progress.
17. Reflection: Writing about learning instead of doing it.
18. Personalization Engine: An algorithm guessing what a student might tolerate next.
19. Adaptive Learning: Software changing the order of the same shallow tasks.
20. AI Tutor: Instant feedback with no understanding of confusion.
21. Learning Analytics: Surveillance, but with dashboards.
22. Efficiency: Doing less teaching, faster.
23. Automation: Removing humans from the parts that required judgment.
24. Generative: Producing something that looks like thinking.
25. Digital Literacy: Knowing which buttons not to press.
26. Transformation: Same outcomes, higher subscription fees.
Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of The Subversive Art of a Classical Education (Regnery, 2026).




Please make a bingo card for teachers to use in faculty meetings
Merciless and hilarious. Ah, I needed that. Please let readers know if you speak on any podcasts!