Loris Malaguzzi Quotes

“A child has a hundred languages, but the school and society steal ninety-nine of them.”

“Creativity becomes more visible when adults try to be more attentive to the cognitive processes of children than to the results they achieve in various fields of doing and understanding.”

“I was an elementary school teacher. My poor theoretical models were all ridiculously overturned. First, it was really traumatic that building a school could be an idea coming from ordinary people – women, hired hands, metalworkers, and smallholders.

But the second school paradox was that the school was built by that same people, without money, without permission, without technical help, without a council of directors, school supervisors and leaders of parties, but with only their working hands, placing one brick on top of another.”

“Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning and how to learn.”

“Our task is to help children communicate with the world using all their potential, strengths and languages, and to overcome any obstacle presented by our culture.”

“Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different from before.”

“There is an inner voice that pushes children on, but this force is greatly multiplied when they are convinced that facts and ideas are resources, just as their friends and the adults in their lives are precious resources.

It is especially at this point that children expect – as they have from the beginning of their life adventure – the help and truthfulness of grownups.”

“To make a loveable school, industrious, inventive, liveable, documentable and communicable, a place of research, learning, re-cognition and reflection, where children, teachers and families feel well – is our point of arrival.”