THE HUNDRED LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN
- 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.
- Always a hundred
- ways of listening
- of marveling, 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
- to love and to marvel
- only at Easter and at 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
- Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach
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