This essay explains the relevance of critique in rural education to novels about rural places. The most important quoted passage in the essay is from the noted physicist Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Novelist-physicist C. P. Snow, historian Henry Adams, and poet and student-of-mathematics Kelly Cherry also provide relevant testimony. The exposition includes definitions of critique and interprets the distressing lack of attention given to critique throughout education research. In brief, critique is the antidote to the dogmas so prevalent in education studies that they justify claims that education research is "unscientific." In rural education research, meanings from everyday life must be represented, and novels provide valuable experience running contrary to the dogma. Critique in rural education can therefore originate with the meanings on offer in such experience. The essay provides examples of novels useful to critique and also of successful critique in rural education research. The concluding discussion offers counsel about how to write critique in this vein. To be clear, the outlook here embraces such concepts as reality, objectivity, reliability and validity, and the practicality of research for both ordinary citizens and professional educators. Nothing in this essay, however, suggests that natural science is the only or most suitable model of systematic inquiry for rural education research. Appended are: (1) Specific Novels Commended (Not a Canon!)