by Loris Malaguzzi
No way. The hundred is there.
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 world 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.