Petra Rodriguez, a middle-aged Spanish-speaking migrant woman without reading skills, made it clear when interviewed about reading, that she felt it to be the responsibility of literate people to teach illiterate people how to read. The researcher, as part of another project, arranged for tutoring in the woman's home and discovered that the woman's idea of reading differed from the tutor's and required adjustments in the psycholinguistic approach originally taken. Her concern was more with getting the letters right than with having meaningful reading experiences. A second and ultimately greater obstacle involved critical consciousness of one's self and situation. The problems of arranging transportation for the woman and her son's attitude about her learning to read led the investigator to understand that she and the tutor had missed important opportunities to direct the instruction to themes of importance to the student: her role, her life, her perceptions of herself. In addition, the investigator saw, after the fact, opportunities for looking at her own stereotypes of women, illiterates, or Mexican migrants, or at her attitudes and concepts of reading curriculum in this situation. (MSE)