Since joining The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Indonesia has been actively shaping its education policy following the recommendations derived from the results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In response to the consistently low PISA reading scores, in 2015 the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture launched a literacy program called the School Literacy Movement. However, PISA results in 2018 indicated that the literacy score of Indonesian students was lower than their score before the SLM program. This paper will analyze the conceptual problems behind the failure of the SLM. Using Paulo Freire's concept of critical literacy as an analytical framework, this paper will investigate the basic assumptions of the SLM concerning the concept of human and his/her relations to the world and its implications on the program's appreciation of students' agency as learners. This article explores how a literacy practice with problematic concepts of human fails to become a humanization movement, instead the literacy practice only becomes a tool for the state to pursue economic targets under the pressure of global neoliberalism. In doing so, this paper seeks to explore how the neoliberal framework inherent in PISA has shaped a literacy program in one of its participating countries.