Just out of curiosity, did you phrase the question "expose a class's instance variables for read access," or "write a getter?" I see it as the difference between academic phrasing and colloquial.

I phrased the question in many different ways and verified that he understood that I meant, "how do I get the value of @foo from an object of a class that has @foo?" The answer he gave did not hinge on the distinction, and ended up being the ol'

    def foo
      @foo
    end