dunce

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
dunce/dʌns/

▶noun a person who is slow at learning.

word history: Dunce was originally a name for a follower of the 13th-century Scottish theologian John Duns Scotus, whose system of theology and philosophy, known as scholasticism, with its emphasis on tradition and dogma, was taught in universities throughout medieval Europe. The followers of Duns Scotus, known as Duns men, dunce men, or dunces, were ridiculed by 16th-century humanists and reformers as hair-splitting pedants and enemies of learning, and thus the word dunce acquired its negative connotations.