Chapter 4: Is Realism A Better Belief Than Nominalism?: Reopening the Ancient Debate

It is reasonable to assume that some kinds of teacher beliefs may be more important for teaching and learning than others. If so, then the beliefs being considered in this chapter—which deal with the question of what constitutes knowledge and how that knowledge is acquired—should meet this criterion. The debate about the merits of one position or the other regarding the nature and origin of knowledge is of ancient vintage, of course, as the title of this chapter suggests. So heated, in fact, was this debate seven hundred years ago that the name of the loser, a thirteenth century scholastic scholar called John Duns Scotus, became synonymous with the term for slow-wittedness or stupidity (i.e., “dunce,” derived from Duns). Although currently out of fashion, this term was widely used by teachers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century to punish and motivate students who evidenced what was considered at the time to be almost willful stupidity. In fact, mid-nineteenth century teachers, not content with the use of a verbal rebuke alone, decided to up the ante by adding a tangible consequence—the conical shaped head fitting known as the “dunce cap.”