The child is made of one hundred. The child has a hundred languages a hundred hands a hundred thoughts a hundred ways of thinking of playing, of speaking.
A hundred, always a hundred ways of listening, of marvelling, of loving, a hundred joys for singing and understanding. a hundred worlds to discover, a hundred worlds to invent, a hundred worlds to dream.
The child has a hundred languages (and a hundred hundred hundred more) but they steal ninety nine. The school and the culture separate the head from the body.
They tell the child to think without hands to do without head to listen and not to speak to understand without joy love and marvelling only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child to discover the world already there and of the hundred they steal ninety nine. They tell the child that work and play reality and fantasy, science and imagination, sky and earth, reason and dream are things that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there. The child says: No way The Hundred is there.
Loris Malaguzzi 1920-1994 Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach For more information call 5821 9982
