Alarms tend to go off in my head whenever I see phrases like this:
My immediate response is "wow, this person hasn't just been drinking the cool-aid, they're been swimming in it so long they now think that it is air." This does not seem like communication in any meaningful sense of the word. It is more like the sort of call that birds make to let others of their species know that they are in the area.
Here's another gem:
"Critical literacy focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action."
I thought the idea of being critical is to look for errors and biases to help weed out the truth (or in a literary sense, to look at an authors work in a broader context). I would think that promoting transformation and action comes under the heading of "advocacy." There is nothing wrong with advocacy, but I think the way the terms are being mixed here represents muddled thinking and is not a good basis for instruction.
Also, from certain examples in the article I'm concerned about replacing critical thinking about one source of information (a textbook perhaps), with uncritical acceptance of a teacher's preferred source of information - which may just be the teacher's own opinion. I would much rather see students engaged in critical thinking about two different texts with different points of view on the same topic. This is the essence of healthy debate.
I was also a bit disturbed that the author seems to equate critical literacy with reading different points of view. For instance, here is one passage:
"For example, when problematizing the initial understanding that Japanese caused oppression and suffering in World War II, A Special Fate: Chiune Sugihara: Hero of the Holocaust (Gold, 2000) might be used as a critical text. It tells the story of a Japanese ambassador in Lithuania who helped thousands of Jews get transport visas out of Europe. The knowledge provided by such a text helps the reader take a critical stance."
Huh? If the critical stance is "there are good people and bad
people in any society", then reading the suggested text might be a good
counterpoint to information that the Japanese propagated some truly
horrendous war crimes in World War II. But again, I am flumuxed
by the strange use of the word "critical." To me this is best
described as just seeing events from different sides to gain a broader
context. This is certainly not a bad thing, but the terminology
the author is using obscures what she is trying to say.
Being a math teacher, it is hard to see how I would apply this article in my classroom. However, if I were a history teacher, I think I would be disappointed in how the author of this article presents something fairly obvious in such an obscure and jargon filled way.