Dunce caps

Dunce cap

A dunce cap, also variously known as a dunce hat, dunce's cap or dunce's hat, is a pointed hat, formerly used as an article of discipline in schools in Europe and the United States—especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries—for children who were disruptive or were considered slow in learning. In the 19th century, it was seen by some as degrading: in 1831, children's book author Sidney Babcock wrote of the dunce cap as debasing and harsh, and in 1899, historian Alice Morse Earle compared it to other forms of school discipline she saw as degrading and outdated. It became unpopular in the early 20th century. However, some North American schools still permitted caps as late as the 1950s. In modern pedagogy, punishments like dunce caps have fallen out of favor: By 1927, an editorial in the Educational Research Bulletin stated: "The rod and the cap were not eminently successful ... we have our doubts about exclusion being the solution to the problem. ... High scholarship is not produced by students who have their curiosity stifled by their teachers. Curiosity must be stimulated if scholarship is desired, and sympathy is essential to this stimulation."