This is double-edged. The people whose consciousness is being raised may be given information they most desperately lack and need, may be given moral support they need. But the process nearly always means that the pupil gets only the propaganda the instructor approves of. Raising Consciousness, like Commitment, like Political Correctness, is a continuation of that old bully, the Party Line. A very common way of thinking in literary criticism is not seen as a consequence of Communism, but it is.
Every writer has the experience of being told that a novel, a story, is 'about' something or other.
I wrote a story, 'The Fifth Child,' which was at once pigeonholed as being about the Palestinian problem, genetic research, feminism, anti-Semitism and so on. An effective conversation stopper, I assure you. But what is interesting is the habit of mind that has to analyze a literary work like this. If you say, 'Had I wanted to write about AIDS or the Palestinian problem I would have written a pamphlet,' you tend to get baffled stares. That a work of the imagination has to be 'really' about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism.