The three Rs (as in the
letter ''R'') are three basic skills taught in schools:
reading,
writing
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
and
arithmetic (usually said as "reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic"). The phrase appears to have been coined at the beginning of the 19th century.
The term has also been used to name other triples (see
Other uses).
Origin and meaning
The skills themselves are alluded to in
St. Augustine's ''
Confessions'': 'learning to read, and write, and do arithmetic'.
The phrase is sometimes attributed to a speech given by
Sir William Curtis circa 1807: this is disputed. An extended modern version of the three Rs consists of the "functional skills of literacy, numeracy and
ICT".
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."
[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)]
Other uses
More recent meanings of "the three Rs" are:
* In the subject of
CNC code generation by Edgecam Workflow: Rapid, Reliable, and Repeatable
* In the subject of
sustainability:
Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
* In
animal welfare principles in
research
Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
(see
The Three Rs for animals): Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement
* (See also
3R disambiguation)
See also
*
Standards based education reform
Education reform in the United States since the 1980s has been largely driven by the setting of academic standards for what students should know and be able to do. These standards can then be used to guide all other system components. The SBE (stan ...
*
Traditional education
Traditional education, also known as back-to-basics, conventional education or customary education, refers to long-established customs that society has traditionally used in schools. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressiv ...
*
Trivium (education)
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Three Rs, The
Education reform
Latin words and phrases