My few breaks are spent running to the laundry room to keep the hubster and myself in clean clothes for the coming week. To say that I am weary of being a student is a pathetic understatement. When I accept the diploma for my PhD in Teaching & Learning/Teacher Education it will be my third higher education degree in the span of 10 years. I am mentally tired and ready to start living like a normal person again.
I do see a sliver of beckoning light at the end of my self-imposed black tunnel. I have finished all required coursework, passed my comprehensive exams, and am grinding through my dissertation proposal. With stacks of university library books, Amazon finds, and research articles stacked comically around my desk, I have spent this day embracing some research, rejecting others as unaligned to my research, and trying vainly to make a dent in this behemoth project.
Just another Saturday.
And then I came across a poem, and I forgot about all else.
It is beautiful, this poem. It is poignant. It is raw and painful. And it is true. As an educator I cannot argue with the poem's message. In many ways, we do education all wrong. We try to teach counter intuitive to how children are wired. We make them sit for long stretches of time. Then when their bodies urge them to run or skip or twirl to release all of that pent up energy, we chastise them for being noisy and rambunctious. We keep them inside when their lungs and hearts long for fresh breezes and bird song. Instead of giving their brains time to rest and process new information, we just keep cramming more in there. We tell them what they need to know when we should be listening to what they would like to know.
At the same time, I know we need rules and policies and classroom management strategies. I've taught long enough to get it. I am not unsympathetic to the endless demands on today's teachers.
I just think we should teach more with the "hundred languages" in mind. Instead of driving the child out of our students, how can we work within their framework just a wee bit more?
I propose to the world of education that we stop stealing the ninety-nine and instead, learn the hundred.
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 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 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.
By Loris
Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
Edwards,
C., Gandini, L. Forman, G. (Eds.). (2012). The hundred languages of
children: The
Reggio
Emilia experience in transformation.
Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
