Month 4 Week 2: The Hundred Languages of Childhood

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 (Founder of the Reggio-Emilia approach)