You Have A Hundred Languages #14

SHOW NOTES

This is a special episode. Building a career as an entrepreneur and a theatre-maker taught me that I am way more resourceful, creative and connected than I ever imagined I could be. And so, in this episode, I would like to celebrate our creativity, our potential for re-invention and connection with this beautiful poem from Loris Malaguzzi, one of the thought-leaders of the Reggio Emilia Approach.

He wrote a beautiful poem called The Hundred Languages of Children, which very much describes the foundation of the Reggio movement and shows the importance of freedom, exploration and creativity not only in children’s development but in our journey of discovering our full human potential. 

That’s my translation of the poem. Enjoy! 

The hundred languages of children 

by Loris Malaguzzi

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 reasoning

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 languages do not exist.

But the child says, again and again:

No way. The hundred is here.