To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks.

Milne’s line plays on the gap between symbol and meaning: a letter (or a grade) is not inherently valuable, but becomes meaningful through education and shared conventions. Read as a wry comment on schooling, it suggests that literacy and learning transform simple marks into tools for thought, communication, and social evaluation. The joke also hints at how credentials can look arbitrary from the outside—an “A” as an accolade is, materially, just a few strokes—yet within an educated system it carries real consequences. The epigram thus balances skepticism about symbols with an endorsement of the interpretive power education provides.