Reggio Emilia Philosophy

While in Sweden I read four books. It was wonderful having time to read again. Earlier last year I was doing really well keeping up with my book-a-month goal, but over the summer during our move, I stopped reading completely. Yesterday I went through the shelves to choose my next book. I'll be spending this weekend in Texas, as my godchild is being baptised. I need reading material for the planeride there and back.

I chose The Hundred Languages of Children. I bought this book about 7 years ago for a paper I was writing for a child development class. The book is about the Reggio Emilia philosophy of education. I was so fascinated by this philosophy and its emphasis on fostering children's creative expression. I have read short parts of this book, but haven't read it straight through, cover to cover. I think it will be the perfect thing to read as I prepare my own family child care. The founder of the philosophy, Loris Malaguzzi, wrote a wonderful poem that beautifully expresses his approach to child development. Here is the poem:

No way. The hundred is there.
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 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 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
Translated by Lella Gandini