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.
The skills themselves are alluded to in St. Augustine's Confessions: '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]