ABSTRACT
Critical pedagogy is hotly discussed and highly debated in the academy. This chapter describes the applications of critical pedagogy to a secondary English class in Oakland, a Northern California urban center, that we co-taught for three years. It begins with the underlying principles that simultaneously honored the spirit of the discipline of secondary English, our commitment to academic excellence, and our belief in the practice of education for individual and collective freedom. One of the core foundational philosophical principles of classroom pedagogy and practice was a belief that multiculturalism was more closely related to pedagogy than to curriculum. As the racial tensions escalate in the movie, the class becomes more emotionally charged and begins to identify with the African Americans in the film and to root for them. It is important to highlight that watching a film together in a classroom is a social activity that is different from reading a text privately and then discussing it publicly.
