expectations of young children (The Hundred Languages of Childhood)

ene

Having worked in many creches and nursery both in Ireland and the UK i have seen many incidences of preschool children's creativity being stopped.

To tell a child to draw something that we see or the way we see it, sculpt something into our idea of shapes or colour in certain colours does not allow there imagination and creativity to develop.

My manager just sent me this poem and i think everyone would benefit in reading it as it makes some really good points! It is written by the founder of nurseries in Reggio Emilia in Italy were they are said to have the best preschool facilities in the world.


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 Approach