Dunce Day
Dunce Day is held on November 8. This event in the first decade of the month November is annual.
Dunce is a mild insult in English meaning "a person who is slow at learning or stupid". The etymology given by Richard Stanyhurst is that the word is derived from the name of the Scottish Scholastic theologian and philosopher John Duns Scotus.
U.S. National Dunce Day is celebrated on November 8 every year. The day commemorates the death anniversary of the Scottish philosopher, John Duns Scotus.
The dunce cap has long been a visual symbol of idiocy and punishment but was once seen as something closer to a wizard’s hat. It was used as late as the 1950s in American schools. As modern conceptions of classroom etiquette and punishments that didn't humiliate and traumatize students evolved, use of the dunce cap was phased out and banned in most Western schools.
Today John Dun Scotus is thought be one of the great thinkers of the Middle Ages. He was even beatified in 1993 by Pope John Paul II, in recognition for his contributions to religious theory. Perhaps there is still room for the cap to be viewed as the symbol of learning it once was.