August 2012
7 posts
The Hundred Languages
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
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach
Inside Google's New York City Office →
newsfeed.time.com
Ideas for innovative school design? From Time Magazine.
The Glory and the Bounty that is Bronx County
Get them out of the classroom, give them what they call an “authentic” task, and the sky is the limit. No test could ever assess or get kids ready for life like this. Please watch!
Unlearning College?
From the Washington Post:
Siddiqui, 18, was accepted to several universities. But she turned them all down. Siddiqui is a Thiel Fellow.
The Thiel Fellowship was named for founder and funder Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal, early investor in Facebook, billionaire). The program, in its second year, works like this: 20 teenage winners each get a $100,000 grant to pursue a project of his or her own design. For two years, Siddiqui can devote herself to her ambitious, if not exactly original, goal — to end poverty. There’s just one catch. Until the end of the fellowship, no college allowed.
Siddiqui hasn’t decided what she’ll do when her stint is over. “People want my opinion on higher education,” she said, but she has no interest in chiming in. “The truth is, this is just something I wanted to do.”
Her choice raises the very question Siddiqui won’t answer: Is college worth it?
Read more here.
