The basic character of literacy is the creation of objects to regulate interactions with the physical and social worlds. "Remediation" means a shift in the way that mediating devices regulate coordination with the environment. If research on reading is to make a difference, it will have to start with an understanding of how contemporary social-historical contexts shape the nature of instruction and the production of school failure. Current data show how, without special cultural support systems, the individual teacher is at an enormous disadvantage in trying to get a student over the major misunderstanding that reading is reading individual words so that they sound right. Reading is a process of interpreting the world. Current research using an interpretive model has produced remarkable changes in the reading ability of seventh grade students. But the system of remediation most commonly used is one that goes back to the system of the basic unit again. Instead of basic skills, a socio-cultural approach to reading talks about basic activities and instantiates those needed to carry out the whole process of reading in the general conditions for learning. When such lesson contexts are created, children can learn to read who otherwise couldn't be taught. (RH)