When are the adults really going to begin socializing?
These comments are translated and adapted from a seminar presented by Professor Loris Malaguzzi in Reggio Emilia, Italy, June 1993.
There are hundreds of different images of the child. Each one of you has inside yourself an image of the child that directs you as you begin to relate to a child. This theory within you pushes you to behave in certain ways; it orients you as you talk to the child, listen to the child, observe the child. It is very difficult for you to act contrary to this internal image. For example, if your image is that boys and girls are very different from one another, you will behave differently in your interactions with each of them.
The environment you construct around you and the children also reflects this image you have about the child. There’s a difference between the environment that you are able to build based on a preconceived image of the child and the environment that you can build that is based on the child you see in front of you — the relationship you build with the child, the games you play. An environment that grows out of your relationship with the child is unique and fluid. The quality and quantity of relationships among you as adults and educators also reflects your image of the child. Children are very sensitive and can see and sense very quickly the spirit of what is going on among the adults in their world. They understand whether the adults are working together in a truly collaborative way or if they are separated in some way from each other, living their experience as if it were private with little interaction.
Posing Important Questions
When you begin working with children in the morning, you must, as adults, pose questions about
the children, such as: “When are these children really going to begin socializing?” And at the same time the children will pose questions to the adults: “When are the adults really going to begin socializing?” This is a dialogue that needs to be continual between the adults and the children. The adults ask questions from the world of adults to the children. The children will ask questions to the adults. The expec- tations that the children have of the adults and the adults have of the children are important. We must spend some time talking about these expectations.
The family — mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grand- parents — is also involved in this questioning. Daily
Your Image of the Child: Where Teaching Begins
by Loris Malaguzzi
they need to ask: “What is this child doing in the school?”
It’s very probable that once a day, maybe twice or three times or many times a day, the children are asking themselves: “What is my mother doing?” “What is my father doing?” “What is my brother or my sister doing?” “Are they having more fun than I am?” “Are they bored?”
The school we are talking about is not the school you are familiar with in the past, but it is something that you can hope for.