The three Rs

This article is about the abbreviation for reading, writing and arithmetic. For other uses, see Three Rs.

The three Rs[1] are three basic skills taught in schools: reading, writing and arithmetic", Reading, wRiting, and ARithmetic[2] or Reckoning. The phrase appears to have been coined at the beginning of the 19th century.

Origin and meaning

The skills themselves are alluded to in St. Augustine's Confessions: Latin: ...legere et scribere et numerare discitur 'learning to read, and write, and do arithmetic'.[3]

The phrase is sometimes attributed to a speech given by Sir William Curtis circa 1807: this is disputed.[4][5][6] An extended modern version of the three Rs consists of the "functional skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT".[7]

The educationalist Louis P. Bénézet preferred "to read", "to reason", "to recite", adding, "by reciting I did not mean giving back, verbatim, the words of the teacher or of the textbook. I meant speaking the English language."[8]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Obsolete Skill Set: The 3 Rs". www.papert.org. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
  2. ^ "Definition of THE THREE R'S". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  3. ^ Confessions 13:1:20 Loeb Classical Library, p. 37
  4. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2008, s.v. 'R' I:3
  5. ^ Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, 2nd edition, 2013, s.v., p. 457, excerpted in The Free Dictionary
  6. ^ John Limbird, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, 124 (January 22, 1823), p. 75
  7. ^ Functional Skills
  8. ^ L. P. Benezet, "The Teaching of Arithmetic I, II, III: The Story of an Experiment," Journal of the National Education Association, Volume 24(8): 241-244 (November 1935)