Community Heart Early Learning Program
(Niigaanaki Day Care Centre)

The child is made of one hundred. 

The child has 
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hungdred 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 words
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
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach