Loris Malaguzzi și colaboratorii

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   A child thinks in drawing, clay, movement, shadow and construction as seriously as they think in words, and an education that recognises only one language does not simplify but amputates.

   The Hundred Languages of Children · 1993

   Documentation shows the process, not the product — and that is exactly why it changes what the child aims at.

   Reggio Emilia is a city in northern Italy whose preschools were literally built after the war by parents, on the idea that a city that has lived through fascism needs citizens able to think for themselves. Malaguzzi, a teacher, was the architect of the approach. A few features make it recognisable. The project: children follow a question of their own for weeks, with no syllabus saying where they must arrive. Documentation: educators photograph, transcribe and display the process rather than the product, so that the children's thinking becomes visible to them, to the parents and to the educators at once — it is simultaneously a method of teaching, of training and of public accountability. The atelier, with a permanently employed artist, gives access to real materials. The environment is called the third educator, after other children and adults. One detail says everything: at Reggio, educators do not work from worksheets prepared in advance, precisely because a prepared answer makes the child's question pointless.

   “The child has a hundred languages, but they steal ninety-nine. School and culture separate the head from the body.”

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