A fundamental principle of the Reggio Emilia Approach is that children express themselves in a variety of ways. They use verbal skills of course, but also paint, jumping, music, rearranging toys, shouting, drawing, wiggling, and on and on. Called the “100 languages” of children, the concept is not limited to one hundred. It is symbolic of the endless ways children choose to interact with people and their environment.
But that interaction goes both ways. The 100 languages also describes the many ways children learn. That means that teachers don’t (and shouldn’t) just talk at their students. They use paint and make-believe — even wiggling and (playful) shouting — to teach. While many classical schools tell students to sit still and listen, Reggio schools say, “No way! The hundred is there.”
Originally written by Loris Malaguzzi, a pioneer of the Reggio Emilia Approach, and translated by Lella Gandini, this poem describes the how children use the 100 languages.
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.