One of the most successful stories
in Early Childhood Education is the
Reggio Emilia project, which, for years,
has been forging its own path worthy
of greater consideration among educators
and parents. Spearheaded by the visionary
founder, Loris Malguzzi and a host
of daring practitioners as well as
receiving the support of courageous
parents, this Early Education design,
which begins at the infancy level,
has become a true bastion of schooling
for the child where excitement for
learning is generated. Situated just
a few miles south of Milan, the Reggio
Emilia experiment has sought to promote
a new vision of education that strongly
defies the traditional canons of schooling,
conceived within the usual classroom
walls, characterized by a desk and
pupil chairs, and the dominant presence
of the teacher as if he or she were
the ultimate oracle ready to dispense
knowledge.
In a typical Reggio
Emilia-inspired setting, - this
concept has begun
to spread like wild fire across the
globe.
There are now some hundreds of Reggio
Emilia centers in Europe, Asia and
in the U.S., most notably in Burlington,
Vermont, Lincroft, New Jersey, Miami,
Michigan and Washington, D.C. where
innovative learning strategies in
Early Childhood education are well
on the
way – one senses immediately
a deep respect for the child upon
entering any of these schools.
In an age whereby the culture of childhood
is quickly undermined for the sake
of imposing a more rigorous training
program so that the child can get an
earlier grip on standardized testing,
thus accelerating the process of becoming
an adult, the Reggio Emilia concept
is a welcoming stride forward. It promises
to challenge traditional approaches
while focusing on the childhood, exploring
all its dimensions and, above all,
instilling in the child the pleasure
of learning.
One of the temptations
facing the initial observers of
the Reggio Emilia
experiment is the desire to label
this as just another Montessori school.
While the two approaches are strikingly
similar on the surface in that they
both foster a climate that is conducive
to the overall unfolding of a child’s
potentials, the latter does not fully
recognize the inherent expressiveness
that the child brings to the educational
cadre that is not limited to the
linguistic component but rather it
extends itself
to a multitude of conditions, such
as the imagination, communication
in its wider dimension, ethnic, and
cognitive
occurrences. Both methods advocate
a smaller class-size and a highly
stimulating learning environment
whereby the child
is allowed to explore without feeling
inhibited. The Reggio Emilia mode
is truly a constructivist approach,
whereby
the child gives meaning to its fantasies,
creativity and to the way it perceives
the world.
A 1996 exhibit of
the Reggio Emilia experiment, titled
The One Hundred
Languages of Children,” is probably
pivotal in understanding its philosophical
orientation in that it accentuates
the importance of the child’s
total composition, be it psychological,
physical, spiritual, cultural and otherwise.
In other words, the one size fits all
approach runs antithetical to this
pedagogical notion.
On a recent visit to L’Atelier
School of Miami, I had the privilege
of observing first hand the vitality,
the excitement and the pleasure with
which children try to shape the world
around them. Upon accessing the building,
one has a sense of entering a habitat
occupied by children, with its colorful
decorations, plants and flowers, birds,
photos of each child attending the
school, designated by a flag, making
specific references to one’s
ethnic background and, most importantly,
children’s work, posters, collages,
artifacts ubiquitously displayed in
every conceivable area of the school,
clearly manifesting a reverence for
the child and its work.
The drop off procedure, when the parent
accompanies the child to school, is
fairly atypical in that it becomes
highly personalized. Parents are encouraged
to stay with the child for a while
and to partake of the morning assembly,
by singing in a variety of languages
so as to reduce any separation anxiety
that the child may experience when
saying goodbye to a loved one. The
transition from home to school is highly
softened for the child encounters a
nurturing ambience, designed to strengthen
whatever insecurities may surface away
from home. The traditional separation
of school and society is quickly diminished
here for there is a sense of the continuum
in that the learning process is being
conducted in another venue, without
the child ever feeling angst away from
home.
Once inside L’Atelier, children
begin to interact with one another
and to observe the world around them.
The teacher’s presence is nonconforming
in that learning activities are not
predicated on what the learners are
expected to accomplish at the end of
a learning segment, rather it is the
child who elects to partake of an activity.
The learning menu is highly diversified,
ranging from dancing, coloring, painting,
shaping clay, discovering one’s
shadow, role playing and a whole host
of stimulating experiences, such as
helping one another, sharing a game,
making friends and analyzing how things
works so the child can find an appropriate
comfort zone, which would allow optimum
levels of expressions.
L’Atelier is
also a laboratory whereby children
learn to make discoveries
about themselves in a variety of
stimulating settings. If errors are
made in their
assumptions, they are given the opportunity
to refine their self-expressions.
But it is equally a collective experience
whereby children learn to socialize,
to get along with one another and
to
respect diversity in all its forms.
This is a school where everyone is
engaged in the creative process,
be it a mural, a dance, a game or
a learning
activity, without ever competing
with one another. On the contrary,
it is
the celebration of the self within
the collective effort of teamwork.
The relationship
between the child and the teacher
reaches a new plateau
in that the dialogue is highly interactive,
based on the notion that through synergetic
education, by infusing joy to the learning
process, a child’s capacity to
create is unleashed. Teachers in this
setting have the uncanny ability of
inviting the child to become expressive,
to recognize the childish in the child
and to reaffirm it rather than suppress
it. In other words, the child’s
curiosity and its inquisitive nature
are fostered in every segment of a
learning activity, for teachers do
not talk down to the child.
If Jean Jacques Rousseau were alive
today, he might say that Emile has
been truly liberated not in the sense
of roaming the wild natural habitat,
rather liberated to make inquiries,
to explore his sensory perceptions
to the fullest extent possible and
to give meaning to the world of his
imagination. Indeed, Emile would not
be the least obstructed because the
Reggio Emilia approach is naturally
conducive to a learning mode which
leans heavily on the learning style
of the child, which in turn enables
the child to unfold its optimum desire
for learning. Perhaps, a poem by Malaguzzi
himself says it best when he contemplates
the strength that each child brings
to the learning environment and which
too often is ignored by school practitioners
in their blind zeal to implement rigid
state curricula:
Il bambino The child
È fatto di cento. Is made of one hundred.
Il bambino ha The child has
cento lingue a hundred languages
cento mani a hundred hands
cento pensieri… a hundred thoughts…
cento mondi a hundred worlds
da scoprire to discover
cento mondi a hundred worlds
da inventare to invent
cento mondi a hundred worlds
da sognare… to dream…
Loris Malaguzzi Translated by Lella Gandini
Francesco Bonavita
Kean University
Union, New Jersey
