I detail findings from an ethnographic study of a high school remedial reading class, with a particular focus on students’ perceptions of what it means to be literate and how their mandatory enrollment in the course impacted their identities. Compounding students’ experiences was the existence of a high-stakes reading examination that all students in the district must pass to graduate high school. Findings describe the contrast between school literacies that students learn in class and their own literate practices, which neither youth nor their teacher recognized as literacies, as well as the functioning of the remedial reading class as a sort of “purgatory” that holds and segregates students, the majority of whom are students of color and/or from marginalized socioeconomic backgrounds, for semesters on end. Still, students employed tactical literacies to subvert the teacher’s directives and reclaim their time. These findings suggest that common approaches to remediation may be a cause of youth disinterest in reading and that youth literacies may be leveraged in service of broader literacy goals, although the school must first acknowledge them.

中文翻译：

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《炼狱》中的阅读：辅导阅读课中的战术素养

我详细介绍了对高中辅导阅读课的民族志研究的结果，特别关注学生对识字意味着什么的看法以及他们在课程中的强制性入学如何影响他们的身份。复杂学生的经历是高风险阅读考试的存在，该地区的所有学生都必须通过高中毕业。调查结果描述了学生在课堂上学习的学校识字与他们自己的识字实践之间的对比，青少年和他们的老师都没有将其视为识字，以及辅导阅读班作为一种“炼狱”的功能，将学生关押并隔离开来，其中大多数是有色人种和/或来自边缘化社会经济背景的学生，连续几个学期。仍然，学生们运用战术素养来颠覆老师的指示并收回他们的时间。这些研究结果表明，常见的补救方法可能是导致青少年对阅读不感兴趣的原因，并且可以利用青少年识字来实现更广泛的识字目标，尽管学校必须首先承认这些目标。