Education for Empowerment: The Link between Multiple Literacies and Critical Consciousness

Critical educators might be viewed as low-hanging branches above the stream of collective consciousness: by not only recognizing and legitimating students' literacies but also helping them acquire new ones, teachers raise students above their native contexts so that they might situate themselves and consider how they truly want to live. Preparing learners for their future roles is good and necessary, but not at the expense of fostering this knowledge of the self. Indeed, it may even be argued that this self-knowledge is precisely what students need to operate as productive and engaged citizens, making these aims far from mutually exclusive. For an education that is truly student-centered, the most foundational reason to legitimate and introduce multiple literacies is because it gives learners the necessary tools to consider and then develop into the people they want to become. Instead of passively flowing down the stream of collective consciousness, students will have an answer for where they came from, where they're going, and how they're going to get there.