Who Invented the Dunce Cap? (And Other Unusual School Supplies)

Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio.

Guess what, Mango? What's that?

Will?

All right?

I know I brought these glue bottles into the studio here and that we have put what do you think Maybe we're on our fifth round of spreading it on our hands and peeling it off.

Just because it's so much fun.

Oh my god, it's so fun. But there's actually a reason that I do this. I do this in classrooms now because I'm here to prove a point. I actually need you to know that the glue that kids use in schools, it's not really.

Glue at all. What do you mean by that?

It's a misnomer. And when I say misnomer to the kids, they looked at me puzzled. But they need to know what the word misnomer means as well. But true glue is derived from natural materials like animal byproducts, plant resins, and since school glue like Elmer's, is actually made from synthetic materials, that technically makes it an adhesive. This is a very very important point.

Man. I loved the idea of you just like stomping around the second grade classrooms yelling stop putting that adheseve in your mouth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know how much I travel these days, and so I try to make it a point by stopping by at least two or three classrooms to make this point. But sure, I mean nearly every example prior to twentieth century was all natural, like tree sap, beeswax, egg whites.

Animal blood.

Then in fact, the very first commercial glue company in the UK made their glue from fish by products from sturgeons to be specific.

Can you imagine what this felt like?

So I actually remember Salvador Dali made this homemade cologne for his wife and it was out of like glue and fish parts. But you know, if you'd use that UK glue instead, like he could have saved himself. It's kind of like a glue life hack.

Yeah, it totally is, and would have felt so good to like peel it off your neck.

And I think I'm gonna go another round here.

But it wasn't just in the UK, like fish glue was the norm in the US too, and at least until Elmer's Glue all hit the market in the late

That's pretty interesting. So are there any advantages to using casin over something like fish parts?

Well, definitely the improved smell, not surprisingly, but case and glue also spread more easily at dried clear much easier to wash out. So if you think about, you know, kids using it, that was really important. But despite all of these improvements, for some reason, they're packaging left much

And so when school.

Kids across the country started investing in this stuff, that's when Borden decided to wise up and they now adopted this This what we think of is this very classic white plastic bottle and has the orange dispenser tip on the top.

So you know me and you know I love glue knowledge. But what is it that means you want to talk about glue today?

Yeah, you really are some kind of an expert on this. But I wanted to talk about school back in September. But as everybody knows, we've all been a bit busy around here. But since our kids are firmly back in school, no vacation in sight, I thought it'd be fun to explore some of the weird origin stories behind school supplies and a few other things you might find in the classroom. So it's time to bust out your protractor. Lock in that retainer because class is back in session. Right Hey,

I'm so jealous of this.

Our friend and producer Loel Burlante check it out mega, Like it's just this smiling panda writing on top of a smiling dolphin, and they're both eating these rainbow colored ice cream cones, which also seems to somehow be smiling.

The moll finds the best stuff. It's incredible, and now I'm smiling.

You know.

I am glad that you kicked this off talking about glue, because it makes it less weird that now I want to talk about backpacks. So these days, the first backpack that most people own is a school backpack, but that hasn't always been the case. So prior to the mid twentieth century, most American students either carried their books to class by hand, or else they wrapped a leather belt or cloth strap around the books and then kind of

It's so weird to think about a world without backpacks, like, especially since you're saying it wasn't all that long ago. I mean, no one really thought about wearing a bag on your back before the twentieth century.

I don't really understand that.

So, I mean, rocksacks were I guess a thing before that, and there were basically the drawstring bags that you slung over your shoulder, but these zippered bags with dual straps like that didn't come along until nineteen thirty eight. And that was the year when a mountaineer named Jerry Cunningham invented the first ever zippered backpack out of canvas cloth and mostly you did this because he didn't like the way traditional rocksacks slid around on his back when he

Again.

I mean, it's hard to believe it would take this long to realize that there was a market for these beyond just mountaineers. So was it Jerry's idea to bring it into the classroom as well?

No, not exactly. I mean, he did keep playing with his backpack. He made the first nylon backpack in nineteen sixty seven, and his designs were mostly for outdoor living. But it's actually that company, JanSport. Did you have a Janzport growing up?

Oh totally, yeah, that's multiple danceports despite the like lifetime guarantee. I think I probably had three different jans Pots.

I know we had between JanSport and LB, and I had so many backpacks and they all had like life lifetime guarantees, and I went through all of them. So he designed this teardrop design and JanSport tweaked it a little and they used it to win over students. But that even makes it sound like a little more intentional

It's funny because a pretty similar thing happened with lunch boxes, which was another surprisingly recent addition to the school supply.

Cannon, which is I guess people didn't want their sandwiches wet for lunch.

No, I don't.

I don't know if you want your sandwiches wet, that's so nasty. Kids were mostly just improvising, you know, through the mid twentieth century or so, they'd use an old cookie tin or a tobacco tin they had lying around somewhere, And so it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that dedicated lunch pails finally arrived on the scene.

I always think that word lunch pails is so funny, like the idea of carrying around a bucket full of food.

I mean, they kind of were.

I mean, the original lunch pails for these small metal buckets, except they did come with lids, and later versions took on more of a like a toolbox or bread basket shape, and they featured these clasps so you could keep the lid shut when you carry them around, which is the kind of lunchbox men took to work in the early twentieth century. You can kind of visualize those images we've seen, and pretty soon their children followed suit at school.

So when did these bright colors and the cartoon characters, Like, when did all that stuff get onto the lunchboxes.

That actually happened pretty early, Like the first one, aim specifically at kids, came in nineteen thirty five when the Aladdin Company put a picture of Mickey Mouse on the front, but with the depression, it didn't quite take off at that time.

Yeah, I'm guessing funds for that sort of thing were a little limited, and you know, foods at a premium, not you know, not the things you're carrying it around in.

Yeah, no, that's true.

But you know, the Aladdin Company kept their idea for this novelty lunch box in their back pocket, and when TV started to take off, this was in the early nineteen fifties, the company got another turn at this, and so they released the metal lunch Box and Thermis that featured a cruelly drawn picture of hop Along Cassidy. Well that might sound pretty dull today, the hop lunch Box was actually a massive hit. They sold six hundred thousand of these things in a single year, and that success

Cowboy lunchbox would sell.

It's just too much cowboy. You don't want two Cowboys. I'm guessing they were wrong about that, though, right.

They were very wrong about this, because remember westerns were a big deal in fifties entertainment, on the same scale as like the superhero movies today, and there was absolutely room on the shelf for two Cowboy lunchboxes.

And Roy Rogers knew this.

So to that end, Rogers partnered with a different company, it was American Thermos, and then together they released a lunchbox that was so popular and wound up selling two and a half million units in nineteen fifty three.

Whoa.

Not only did Roy Rogers you know, this lunch box sell through the roof, it also set a new benchmark for lunchbox design. It had this full color illustration that covered the entire box, and Thermos and so from their lunchboxes really took off. Companies started churning out countless designs

That's pretty incredible. So where lunchbox is still mostly metal at that point or had they already switched over to plastic.

No, these were all still metal, and when all was said and done, roughly one hundred and twenty million metal lunch boxes were sold between nineteen fifty and nineteen seventy. The party kind of ended in nineteen seventy two, though, when the state of Florida banned metal lunch box is from schools. They were you worried that kids were using these heavy boxes as weapons, which led to the plastic boxes that we've seen in more recent years and the eventual declining sales of lunch boxes in general.

So we've covered two of the most quintessential school supplies I feel, like backpacks and lunchboxes. But here's another thing I hadn't thought about in a while, and that's the humble plastic recorder, which is still used in music classes today.

You know, I have always wondered, like, how has decided that every kid in America should learn how to play the recorder? Like I've always just assumed someone on the school board was in cahoots with the manufacturer, and that's how it somehow took off.

Yeah, so I was actually curious about that too, And it turns out that it's largely thanks to the influence of this famous German composer whose music theory became the basis for a lot of the school music programs we see today. His name was Carl Orff, and while his name might not ring a bell, you've definitely heard his most famous work, and at least one movie trailer. It's called Carmina Burana and it sounds like this.

Yeah, that definitely rings a bell. I mean, it's kind of the go to hook for every epic movie since the nineteen nineties exactly.

But anyway, so Orf's approach to teaching music stress the importance of rhythm and creative thinking rather than just memorizing musical notations. And he thought the best way for a kid to learn music was by teaching him to play a simple, accessible instrument that kind of mimic their own vocal range. And the soprano recorder perfectly fit that bill, because you know, at its core, the recorder is practically just a whistle, and unlike more complicated instruments, there are

I do have to say, I mean, you're being pretty cavalier about potentially alienating all those professional recorder players that might be in our audience. I think you should be a little bit more careful.

I think you're right, actually, And Gabe, who did this research, warned me that recorders used to be considered a pretty serious instrument. According to experts, the recorders heyday was probably during the Baroque era when composers like Bach and Vivaldi would actually crank out pieces that showcased recorders in all different sizes, and the recorder kind of got offstaged when the flute came into Europe and Asia and gradually stole

Know, Tony, I don't know if you've ever seen this clip that went viral of you hear the song turned down for what being played, and then right after they say that, it pans to this group of elementary school students and they start playing the like chorus or whatever on their recorders.

It was pretty great.

I know, we've got so much more. So let's take a quick break.

They're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the strange stories behind school supplies. All right, Mango, So as you know, there's a question every parent has to ask sooner or later, and that is, how can I keep my kid from freaking out about their first day of school? Like, it's a scary amount of change for a child to deal with, and there's no universal answer

Actually, just look this up. It's crazy. These cones are like as big as the kids. It's insane.

Yeah, there is.

So all the first year students just lugged these giant cones around like all day.

Well not anymore, no.

I mean nowadays most kids get their shulta does at home and leave it there. But back in the early days of the tradition, kids actually had to rush to the school yard and pick their own from this tree that was said to grow them only when it was time for the school year to start.

That's amazing. I can imagine kids just like waiting at the gates and then running in and getting these plucking these cones from truths. It is kind of funny that you brought up cones, because I actually have the goods on a different sort of cone that was supposed to I guess bring up the opposite reaction, and that's the

I mean, there's nothing like a little public shaming to keep the kids in line.

You know.

Well, it must have been pretty traumatizing for the kids. But the practice actually continued in the US and Europe well into the twentieth century, and Dunce caps were pretty common all the way up until the nineteen fifties.

Oh, I do think of it as like a much older image. I didn't realize they lasted that long.

Yeah.

So here's the wildest part and something I hadn't heard before this week. But we think about the Dunce cap as something that signifies like a lack of intelligence, and it actually began as a symbol of a really accomplished scholar. Born sometime in the thirteenth century. His name was John Dunn Scotis, and he was a Franciscan priest and a linguist. He studied theology and philosophy at Oxford and taught classes

I think in either case, it sounds like the takeaway here is that wise people wear very pointy hats. I think that's the only thing I could take from it always.

But you know, Scotis even went a step further. He actually believed that the conical shape of his hat kind of functioned as this metaphysical reverse funnel, with knowledge collecting at the pointy end and then flowing down around his brain. And so, as silly as it sounds, the idea caught on with academics of the day, and the cone shaped cap became the symbol of both duntsman and of high intelligence in general.

It's sort of bizarre, So like what happened? Like what changed the hats from a mark of pride to this symbol of shame.

I guess, funnily enough, it's actually the Renaissance that changed it. So by the mid sixteenth century, popular theology and philosophy had moved away from Scotus and his teachings, and that lack of popular favor made the remaining Duntsman look silly and kind of outdated. Plus their pointy hats didn't help, so over time, the Duntsman and the dunce cap kind of became the symbol of foolishness and stupidity.

It's such a strange legacy.

On the bright side, though, historians have kind of vindicated Scotis over the years, and he's not held up as one of the finest thinkers of the Middle Ages, and Pope John Paul the Second even beatified him back in nineteen ninety three for his work as a religious scholar. So who knows, maybe we can turn things around for this famous cap too. Anyway, we've got more to come, but first a quick break. Welcome back to part time genius.

Schools, which I mean, that's a good point because it is kind of weird when you think about it. I mean, you assume all the benefits of standing desk apply just as well as students as they would to adult office workers.

Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. So there was this study that came out last year and it found that third graders who used a standing desk at school were more focused in the classroom and more active overall compared to kids of the same age who use traditional sit down desk. And another study came up with the same results for second through fourth graders, setting a twelve percent increase in engagement from students who had the option of standing in class.

I mean, it does sound like things might change in the not two distant future, and maybe we'll see standing desk become more of the norm in these classrooms.

Yeah.

So, a handful of elementary schools across the country have already started adding standing desk to their classrooms, and I'm guessing more and more schools will jump on the trend as they become more affordable. But in the meantime, one elementary school teacher in California, Lynn Akers, has already made the switch to standing desks, and she explained the benefits this way. Quote, children naturally learn through movement. If you restrict them to sitting, they interrupt you more and maybe

But you know, on the other hand, restricting kids this standing all day long could also lead to just as many problems.

I mean, what if they get tired.

Yeah. So, schools are actually using a mix of standing and sitting desks, which lets the kids choose the option what works best for them. And even at schools where there are only standing desks, they tend to provide kids with these tall chairs or stools so that just in case they're tired, they can rest their legs.

It's definitely a smart move And you know, since you mentioned how kids need an outlet for their energy, I do want to touch on something that's kind of become really a controversial topic. Are you talking about recess? I am definitely talking about recess. You know, we have to talk about recess. But instead of talking about how some schools have tried to abolish recess, which maybe was where you were thinking, I actually wanted to look at how we can make recess an even more effective form of

Which is interesting. So what kinds of stuff are we talking about though, Like, because I'm guessing it's something beyond your typical slides and monkey bars.

Yeah, that's right.

So the researchers behind this study helped a few different schools renovate their playgrounds and the main focus was to widen the variety of activities on offer. So in addition to the standard playground fair like swing sets, they added these areas specifically designed for dancing and climbing and skating, and they even dedicated this trampoline area.

And I mean, really, who wouldn't.

Want to spend at least an hour a day in a place like that all those options?

I know it does sound pretty fun. And in the end, isn't that the only school supply that a kid really needs?

Fun?

Pens, pencils, notebooks for lers, there's probably a few other things.

Yeah, it spoken like a true grown up, So why don't we keep the fun going with a fact off? So here's a quick one on crayons. According to a Yale University study, Crayola crayons are one of the most recognizable sense for adults, ranking at number eighteen of all the sense they tried, and it beat out Believe this or not, cheese and bleach. Ah.

That's impressive.

All right. Well, speaking of names for crayons, did you know that Crayola uses multiple names to refer to the same colors. So the practice started early, with the company using fifty four names to refer to just thirty eight separate colors by the end of nineteen oh three, and things only balloon from there. So you fast forward to twenty fifteen and Traila had to signed seven hundred and

So pencils may seem a little old fashioned as more kids learn to type and use pens, but don't count them out just yet. According to the Chicago Tribune, they keep coming back into fashion every so often, and when Sudoku first became a craze, pencils actually had a seven hundred percent increase in sales in London.

Holy cow.

Wow.

All right, Well, here's a quick one.

I didn't realize until our friend Aaron McCarthy did this story on trapper keepers. So apparently the unique folders were called trappers because they kept papers in them so well, and then the binder was called a trapper keeper because it held all the trappers to get You know.

I had always wondered why it had that name. It is such a strange name for a product that I absolutely love. So you gave us the skinny on Elmer's glue at the top of the show. So now I'm actually going to clue you in on Elmer himself because believe it or not, Elmer wasn't created just for the glue bottle. He was actually based on a real bull that the Bordon Company used to advertise its products at

That was a much more involved origin story than I expected for the fact off, especially, but I do like the way you brought the episode full circle. So just for that, I think I'm gonna give you the trophy and I will take it all right. Well, that's going to do it for today's Part Time Genius for myself, Mango, Gabe, and Lowell. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back soon with another episode. Part Time Genius is a production