Children’s ways of communicating and learning about the world are usually reduced by schools and society to a single language. However, as Loris Malaguzzi stated in his poem on the hundred languages of children, there are many more. And each person finds some more useful than others. Therefore, the reductionist approach of treating all children the same diminishes their learning abilities.
Children are made up of a hundred
Children have
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing and of speaking
a hundred, always a hundred
ways of listening
of being surprised, of loving
a hundred joys
to sing and understand
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
Children have
a hundred languages
(and also a hundred, a hundred, and a hundred)
but ninety-nine are stolen from them.
School and culture
separate their heads from their bodies.
They tell them:
to think without their hands
to act without their heads
to listen and not speak
to understand without joy
to love and be surprised
only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell them:
to discover the world that already exists
and of a hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell them
that play and work,
reality and fantasy,
science and imagination,
heaven and earth,
reason and dreams,
are things
that do not go together.
They tell him, in short,
that one hundred does not exist.
And the child says:
But one hundred does exist.
From a pedagogical point of view, the meaning of this poem leads to the use of the languages of nature and the arts as channels of communication that enrich the only accepted language, speech. That is why, at El Castillo Mágico, the world is brought closer through clay, painting, drawing, music, movement, digital instruments, children’s literature, and nature, among many other possibilities, living and acting in accordance with the real characteristics of each stage.
If you would like to know more, please contact our school.
Information and reservations: 611 620 403 – info@ceielcastillomagico.es
