In this article, I argue that one of the gifts of the Age of Enlightenment, the ability to measure, to experiment, to predict--turned rancid by hyper-positivism--is reasserting itself globally in the field of education (including music education). I see a neoliberal, neocolonial connection--in terms of the ideologies that fuel them--between some of the homogenizing, epistemologically/culturally imperialist aspects of globalization and this resurgent hyper-positivism that has been accompanied by a corporatization of education. I posit that critical education, including critical music education, is an essential component of a necessary--if rancorous--dialogue in maintaining a definition of education that is as varied and diverse as those students we wish to educate. In essence, I argue that critical education is one of many tools to help us fight a "re-colonization" by this resurgent hyper-positivism in education.