Dunce Day
Robby in his Dunce's Cap
November 8 is a good day to clean up your act so you don’t have to wear the always-dreaded dunce’s cap.
Dunce Day is a holiday to celebrate dunce’s caps and the term “dunce.”
The dunce’s cap was used back in the day to punish children for misbehaving in school. The child would have to wear the paper hat with a “D” or “dunce” written on it and stand in a corner for a prolonged amount of time.
This day is always on November 8, which is the anniversary of Duns Scotus’s death in 1308. Scotus was a medieval scholar and philosopher that lived in Duns, Scotland.
Scotus invented the dunce’s cap not to be a punishment for bad behavior, but because of stupidity. He believed that knowledge would go from the point of the cap to the head, increasing learning potential.
Even though this sounds like a crazy theory, the dunce’s cap did provide humility, which caused the wearer to be motivated to learn more.
In order to celebrate this day, I plan on making my own dunce’s cap from instructions I found, and wearing it in hopes that it will in fact make me smarter while I study.
If you don’t want to wear your own dunce’s cap, carry one around and make people, who you believe are acting unintelligently, wear it.
Every Day's a Holiday 