Duncan-Andrade and Morrell’s “Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom”

My previous post, written perhaps a little too late into the night to be totally balanced, expounded at length my fundamental objections to any application of Marxism. While, with this article, I have similar objections, this is being written at a more reasonable hour, and should reflect a more reasonable attitude.
The article advocates for a refined and nuanced version of critical pedagogy, which is a method of teaching based on acknowledging and addressing the grievances, here called "existential experiences," of demographically-determined victims, here called "marginalized peoples." The intent of this method is to empower the students so that they will confidently rise above the victimhood that has characterized their perception of the world and become deliberate agents of "social change," by which is generally meant upholding policies that treat individuals differently based on their demographic designations.
Should my reassignment of labels seem already somewhat confrontational, I'll proceed by acknowledging what I find honestly praiseworthy in the article.
There are two superb statements that I could not agree more with, but that seem compromised in principle by the entirety of the article. These are both on page seven. "Our purpose as educators is not to replace one dominant ideology with another." Also, "The goal is not to make them slaves to a different (and more politically correct) ideology, even if it happens to be one we agree with." If these two statements were the bedrock foundation of critical pedagogy, I would be an acolyte to the revelatory education method. This is exactly what I want to offer students: an opportunity to discover readings and interpretations of their own, backed up by textual evidence. This skill of critical consideration, however, is something that must be practiced, and it cannot be practiced by reading only Marxist renderings of situations. And I do not say this because, as a teacher, I would like to keep my students from being tarnished by Marxist theory; far from it. I would be totally in favor of bringing a Marxist text before my students, provided that I had the capitalist text beside it with which to compare.
This stunning lack of diverse ideology, however, is what concerns me in the applications of critical pedagogy described in the article. It is the arrogance of assuming that every person of a certain skin-color or blood heritage should have the same understanding of Castro's revolution in Cuba. It is the ignorance of not even mentioning the point-of-view that is frequently held by those older Cuban immigrants who actually experienced life in Cuba under the Castro regime. Again, I am all for the reading of pro-Castro viewpoints, provided that the anti-Castro dissent is read alongside of it. To not do so is an authoritarian style of education, where the fear of alienation for holding the wrong viewpoint is so strong that every student will be peer-pressured into the groupthink.
To return to the admirable, however, I do appreciate the story of students drawing media attention to the deplorable sewage overflow conditions. This is exactly what should happen, though it should not have to be accomplished by the students themselves, but instead by whistle-blowers within the system, or possibly by parents ( still understanding that many parents in these socioeconomic situations may not have the ability to be involved enough to catch something like this). Then, to draw the conclusion that more money handed to the responsibility of those who were not responsible enough to cancel school under such abominable circumstances, is also problematic, yet it seems to be what is advocated economically. If the irresponsible are not rooted out, no amount of money can solve the situation. No tool can ever be expensive or specialized enough to overcome the incompetency of a worker who uses it.

There are many other good things within the article that I meant to mention. Using the students' background culture and drawing connections to canon texts, questioning what exactly should constitute canon texts, and reading nontraditional interpretations into classic texts, these are all beneficial and worthwhile. And I totally acknowledge that the intentions are nothing but good, even in the strategies with which I object. However, intentions are often not correlative to results.