“The hundred languages of children” is an idea originally conceived by L. Malaguzzi, and has come to be a motto for the Reggio Emilia approach. It is actually a poem that briefly and concisely reflects the confidence of this approach in the child’s potential and illustrates its image of the child.
The hundred languages is actually a metaphor used to indicate the plethora of expressive means with which children represent and convey ideas and emotions as well as the multiple ways in which they comprehend the world.
These languages are not univocal; on the contrary, they are expressive, communicative and cognitive, each of them bearing its own unique characteristics. In the framework of a project, the 100 languages appear in different stages, according to the needs that each team expresses or the project itself inspires.
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 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
