A third-grade education is not the problem, or at least not the sole problem. My dad only had about two or three years of schooling, however, he never stopped reading. He would read literally anything you put in front of him, newspapers, history novels, textbooks, sci-fi novels, anything. He was a truly self educated man. He had a term for people who had a high level of “educated fools”.
Your dad sounds about like my maternal grandfather—about the same level of formal education and a voracious reader from which he learned a great deal.
The bears are definitely Wiley!