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Loris Malaguzzi

Born in Correggio, in the province of Reggio Emilia, on February 23, 1920, Loris Malaguzzi graduated with degrees in Pedagogy from the University of Urbino and Psychology from the CNR (Italian National Research Center) in Rome.
As a young elementary school teacher, he began an intensive parallel educational activity in 1946, working with eight "people's nursery schools"; in 1950 he founded the Municipal Psycho-Pedagogical Medical center, where he worked as a psychologist for over twenty years.
During the same period he continued to dedicate himself to pedagogical activities within the municipal early childhood education system.
As consultant for the Italian Ministry of Education, director of the early childhood magazines Zerosei and Bambini, Malaguzzi founded the Gruppo Nazionale Nidi-Infanzia in Reggio Emilia in 1980.
Conferences, seminars, joint research projects with universities and foundations, and the itinerant exhibit "The Hundred Languages of Children" conceived by Malaguzzi, would take him throughout Europe and to the United States as the untiring promoter of an innovative and creative philosophy of education.
In December 1991, the American magazine Newsweek lauded the preschools of Reggio Emilia as the "best in the world". Following this recognition came the prestigiuos Ygdrasil- Lego Prize (Denmark) in 1992 and in 1993 Malaguzzi was given the Kohl Award in Chicago (USA).
Malaguzzi died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his home in Reggio Emilia on January 30, 1994.
 
  Loris MALAGUZZI  
 

Invece il cento c’è

The hundred is there
Il bambino
è fatto di cento.
Il bambino ha
cento lingue
cento mani
cento pensieri
cento modi di pensare
di giocare e di parlare
cento sempre cento
modi di ascoltare
di stupire di amare
cento allegrie
per cantare e capire
cento mondi
da scoprire
cento mondi
da inventare
cento mondi
da sognare.
Il bambino ha
cento lingue
(e poi cento cento cento)
ma gliene rubano novantanove.
La scuola e la cultura
gli separano la testa dal corpo.
Gli dicono:
di pensare senza mani
di fare senza testa
di ascoltare e di non parlare
di capire senza allegrie
di amare e di stupirsi
solo a Pasqua e a Natale.
Gli dicono:
di scoprire il mondo che già c’è
e di cento
gliene rubano novantanove.
Gli dicono:
che il gioco e il lavoro
la realtà e la fantasia
la scienza e l’immaginazione
il cielo e la terra
la ragione e il sogno
sono cose
che non stanno insieme.
Gli dicono insomma
che il cento non c’è.
Il bambino dice:
invece il cento c’è.

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 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.

Loris Malaguzzi
(translated by Lella Gandini)
 
 

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