EYLF: A vision for childrens' learning

All children engage in learning that promotes confident and creative individuals and successful lifelong learners. All children are active and informed members of their communities with knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives.

Fundamental to the Framework is a view of children’s lives as characterised by belonging, being and becoming. From before birth children are connected to family, communities, culture and place. Their earliest learning, development
and wellbeing takes place through these relationships, particularly within families, who are children’s first and most influential educators. As children participate in everyday life, they construct their own identities and understandings of the world. Educators engage children in learning that promotes confidence, creativity and enables active citizenship. They
celebrate diversity with children and their families, and the opportunities diversity brings to know more about the world. Educators understand children may come from diverse backgrounds and acknowledge this in each
child’s Belonging, Being and Becoming.

100 languages
NO WAY. THE HUNDRED IS THERE
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 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   (translated by Lella Gandini) from the Schools Of Reggio Emelia
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