My father, who today is a pharmacist, sports enthusiast, dog lover, and the workplace clown (formally a class clown I am sure), has always preached to my siblings and I about the three “R’s”, those being: reading, writing, and arithmetic. As a child I always paid more attention to the fact that only one out of those three words actually began with the letter “R”, as an adult, my attention is elsewhere.

Often my father would proclaim his three “R’s” whenever he heard about the outlandish courses myself and my siblings were taking. He would gasp and declare, “Whatever happened to the three “R’s”?”  I never paid this much attention, I figured he was just poking fun at us, and reminiscing about simpler times. While I still believe he is just making a joke, I now see a bit more behind his little saying, and a large part of that has to do with this course.

Whenever my dad would say his three “R’s” I would just shrug it off, I realized that our school system had changed from when he was in it, what I did not realize was how much, how important these changes were, or the pushing factors behind them. After what I have learned in this course, I realized my father would have grown up at the beginning of the progressive era, and been subject to changing educational values, curriculums, and new standards in health, education, and technology. The changing materials and values in school would very well have led to a huge focus on different subjects, as well as old subjects being remodelled. This could have all led to the teaching method of the three “R’s”, placing an emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic.

I realized that I could now see in more detail the changes the school system went through, as well as understand why they evolved. I also now have the background knowledge to comprehend the reason behind new subjects and academic focuses, as well as the values and beliefs shifting around at the time. I can also recognize how those same factors have continued to change from when my father went through school, to when I did, and how our experiences greatly differed.

These are not the types of things I would have fully understood, or appreciated, had I not taken this course. My fathers three “R’s” no longer seem like a funny comment thrown to the wind, but a relic from a pivotal time in history, where they had much different educational values and standards than we do today. Though I may always question why only one of three words really begins with an “R”, I no longer have to question as to why my father is shocked by some of our schooling practices, as I now know how different our educational experiences are.

Image: Bunchberries, taken by Katryna Barone