1. No way. The hundred is there.
By Loris Malaguzzi
translated by Lella Gandini (1990)

2. The child is made of one hundred.

3. The child has a hundred languages

4. A hundred hands

5. A hundred thoughts

6. A hundred ways of thinking

7. Of playing, of speaking.

8. A hundred always a hundred

9. Ways of listening

10. Of marveling, of loving

11. A hundred joys

12. For singing and understanding

13. A hundred worlds to discover

14. A hundred worlds to invent

15. A hundred worlds to dream.

16. The child has a hundred languages

17. (and a hundred hundred hundred more)

18. but they steal ninety-nine.

19. The school and the culture

20. Separate the head from the body.

21. They tell the child:

22. To think without hands

23. To do without head

24. To listen and not to speak

25. To understand without joy

26. To love and to marvel

27. Only at Easter and Christmas.

28. They tell the child:

29. To discover the world already there

30. And of the hundred

31. They steal the ninety-nine.

32. They tell the child:

33. That work and play

34. Reality and fantasy

35. Science and imagination

36. Sky and earth

37. Reason and dream

38. Are things that do not belong together.

39. And thus they tell the child

40. That the hundred is not there.

41. The child says:

42. No way. The hundred is there.

44. No way. The hundred is there.
By Loris Malaguzzi
translated by Lella Gandini (1990)