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 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.
“The Hundred Languages of Children” poem by Loris Malaguzzi read by Carla Rinaldi
In the Reggio Emilia approach, the uniqueness of each child is celebrated. By accepting that each child has their own ability to interpret their world and communicate their own understanding means that not all experiences should be made the same. We should not confine a child’s learning journey to what we as adults have already learned hence the line “they steal ninety-nine” from the poem above.
At Richland Academy, we believe that children have a “hundred languages” of thought, of expression, of thinking. We seek to support those multitudes of “languages” by offering resources, time, and space, supported by experienced educators. The video below provides a glimpse of how the “100 Languages of Children” lives on at Richland Academy.