Реджо Емилия и аз (Хауърд Гарднър)

Документален филм с проф. Хауърд Гарднър за уникалния подход за ранно детско развитие „подходът Реджо” в Реджо Емилия, Италия. Самият проф. Гарднър е вдъхновен от идеите и в продължение на 20 години предлага ценни съвети по отношение на ключови въпроси и работи в сътрудничество с екипа на Карла Риналди − директор на международен център „Лорис Малагуци”.

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Документален филм с проф. Хауърд Гарднър за уникалния подход за ранно детско развитие „подходът Реджо” в Реджо Емилия, Италия. Самият проф. Гарднър е вдъхновен от идеите и в продължение на 20 години предлага ценни съвети по отношение на ключови въпроси и работи в сътрудничество с екипа на Карлина Риналди − директор на международен център „Лорис Малагуци”.

I've never given a lecture on Reggio, but it's easy for me to do because I've been spending so much thinking time.

They treat Malaguzzi like almost like a god-like figure. He was born in 1920. Died in 1994. His birthday is on February 23rd. And they always do a new kind of celebration.

Malaguzzi had the idea, that if you want to rebuild the community, you must start with the education of very young children. And he was deeply knowledgeable about all of the intellectual currents about early education. Pestalozzi, Froebel, Piaget, Dewey, Freinet... He was connected intellectually to the past and to the present.

For thirty years, from 1963 'till he died in 1994, he presided over the development of 33 infant, toddler, and preschools in this town of Reggio. Never went to elementary school or secondary school. Just zero to six. About 40% of the children in Reggio Amelia go to these municipal schools.

So now let me say something about why these schools are special. First of all, they are very beautiful. They are not expensively decorated, but they are decorated with a northern Italian sense of aesthetics and style. So you feel that you are in a special place.

And all of the schools have regular teachers, but they have two additional roles: Pedagogistas are in charge of the curriculum and Ateliestas are in charge of the materials.

The curriculum is based on what ever interests the children And let me mention some of the topics that have been explored for months in the class. Rainbows, shoes, columns, a birdhouse, the lions in front of the town hall. You know, Malaguzzi wrote about the hundred languages of children. And that could be the subtitle of the schools. Because what happens with these themes, like shoes or rainbows, is that the children explore that object or that phenomenon in dozens of ways. The children become interested in something, And then they can spend the rest of the year just on that topic. It's amazing. They tell stories. They make drawings. They build things. They compose music. They go on expeditions. They look at famous works of art. So anyone of these themes opens up the whole world.

They are very contemporary. 20 years ago the theme was the fax machine. And they were faxing to American schools and schools in other countries. When I was there they were using web cameras to photograph me upside down and right side up. So they are very different from Waldorf Steiner schools which do not touch technology.

This is what you would see on your first trip. And you would be very amazed to see little three-year olds talking about rainbows and making rainbows and doing light experiments and things like that. You'd be very impressed. But if you were ignorant, if you were not very smart, you would say, 'The teachers aren't doing anything.'

So we wrote a book together with the people from Reggio. It took five years to write the book. And the book has been translated into many languages. The book is called, "Making Learning Visible." And the book is very beautiful, because everything they do is very beautiful. The book focuses on the two things which are the key to educational success.

One of the themes is called "group learning." And the other is called "documentation." When the children work on a project, they are always working with other children, usually three or four. So in a classroom you have four groups of three or four children. And the children ask questions of each other, help one another, teach one another. And it's very impressive. Let's say the four of us are a group. If Jacky is not here, Rene will say, "What would Jacky do?" They already have an idea of what her contribution is. I've never given a lecture on Reggio, but it's easy for me to do because I've been spending so much thinking time.

They treat Malaguzzi like almost like a god-like figure. He was born in 1920. Died in 1994. His birthday is on February 23rd. And they always do a new kind of celebration.

Malaguzzi had the idea, that if you want to rebuild the community, you must start with the education of very young children. And he was deeply knowledgeable about all of the intellectual currents about early education. Pestalozzi, Froebel, Piaget, Dewey, Freinet... He was connected intellectually to the past and to the present.

For thirty years, from 1963 'till he died in 1994, he presided over the development of 33 infant, toddler, and preschools in this town of Reggio. Never went to elementary school or secondary school. Just zero to six. About 40% of the children in Reggio Amelia go to these municipal schools.
So now let me say something about why these schools are special. First of all, they are very beautiful. They are not expensively decorated, but they are decorated with a northern Italian sense of aesthetics and style. So you feel that you are in a special place.

And all of the schools have regular teachers, but they have two additional roles: Pedogogistas are in charge of the curriculum and Ateliestas are in charge of the materials.

The curriculum is based on what ever interests the children And let me mention some of the topics that have been explored for months in the class. Rainbows, shoes, columns, a birdhouse, the lions in front of the town hall. You know, Malaguzzi wrote about the hundred languages of children. And that could be the subtitle of the schools. Because what happens with these themes, like shoes or rainbows, is that the children explore that object or that phenomenon in dozens of ways. The children become interested in something, And then they can spend the rest of the year just on that topic. It's amazing. They tell stories. They make drawings. They build things. They compose music. They go on expeditions. They look at famous works of art. So anyone of these themes opens up the whole world.

They are very contemporary. 20 years ago the theme was the fax machine. And they were faxing to American schools and schools in other countries. When I was there they were using web cameras to photograph me upside down and right side up. So they are very different from Waldorf Steiner schools which do not touch technology.

This is what you would see on your first trip. And you would be very amazed to see little three-year olds talking about rainbows and making rainbows and doing light experiments and things like that. You'd be very impressed. But if you were ignorant, if you were not very smart, you would say, 'The teachers aren't doing anything.'

So we wrote a book together with the people from Reggio. It took five years to write the book. And the book has been translated into many languages. The book is called, "Making Learning Visible." And the book is very beautiful, because everything they do is very beautiful. The book focuses on the two things which are the key to educational success.

One of the themes is called "group learning." And the other is called "documentation." When the children work on a project, they are always working with other children, usually three or four. So in a classroom you have four groups of three or four children. And the children ask questions of each other, help one another, teach one another. And it's very impressive. Let's say the four of us are a group. If Jacky is not here, Rene will say, "What would Jacky do?" They already have an idea of what her contribution is. In the future, so much at the workplace will be group work. And much education in America is very individualistic, just about the single child. They begin to learn about the group from day one.

The other theme is documentation. If you walk into the school, the school is covered with records of what was done this year and in earlier years. Everywhere. In words photographs, drawings... Because, for them, documentation is like prayer. It's something you do everyday to help you understand what's happening at the school. It is an announcement to the teachers, the visitors, the parents and the students, of what they have been doing. And it is here that the Ateliesta meets the Pedagogista. It's where they meet. And if you want to find the teachers You go into the room after the students are left. And the teachers are all around the room talking about what happened, looking at it and deciding what should happen about it. What did we learn? What should we do different next time? They won't document it, because it's personal. But it's part of their mental documentation.

Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian Italian By the 1970's they had an international publication, "Zero Say" and I was invited to contribute to that. So they already knew about my work, and I was very young. And in the early 1980's my wife and I made our first visit. And since, I have made many trips there. In 1991, Newsweek Magazine asked me to nominate the best schools in the world And I nominated the Reggio School.

So in 1994, Malaguzzi died. And I was very worried that the enterprise would fall apart because he was so central. So I went to an American foundation of philanthropy, and I said, "You should give some money to the schools so they can think about what to do after Mallaguzzi's death, to reflect." And the foundation said to me, "We can not give money to Italy, but we can give some money to Harvard." So we then started a major research project. And for about ten years we studied what is happening in Reggio Amelia.

And just about that time, my teacher, who Rene knows, Jerome Gruner, first heard about Reggio Amelia, and has gone there every years since. The two things, which have so impressed me over the last 30 years and also my own teacher Jerome Gruner, we learned what it was like to really take young children very, very seriously. More seriously than any other individuals, maybe even more seriously than Maria Montessori. And the other is to show, if you take young children seriously, How much is there and how much can be found out through the senses, the languages, and the fantastic projects.

In retrospect, I might have said in 1994, that the schools were in a state of equilibrium. They kind of reached a very good place and maybe stay there. I don't know if that's true. But that's what I would have said 15 years ago. But everything now is different and new. And I'm trying to help them deal with these new things. One is very difficult and challenging. The other is very exciting and promising.

First the difficulty: When I went to Reggio, 30 years ago, everybody looked the same and the community worked very well. When I went there three years ago, I saw a Western Union on every street. 25% of the population is immigrants. Albania, Morocco, China... In one school they have 12 different languages. They were not prepared for this. The families do not share the same assumptions. We might say, Reggio has become 'Balkanized'

But the mayor is very smart. And he has begun to talk about what does it mean to be a citizen of Reggio. And three or four years ago he began to talk with me about this. When I came to Reggio in 2008, with my wife, I brought the two leading experts on immigration and globalization with me. And Reggio wants to be a model community for all of Europe, for how to maintain what is strong in the culture, but at the same time inclusion. They have cultural mediators, who are employed by the city, from these different countries to help bring the immigrants and help the Reggio citizens reach out. And it's not easy, but they are trying very hard. In the weekly news paper, every week young people from a different country are allowed to criticize Reggio and say what they don't like about it. But of course, a lot of the funding depends upon taxes. And many of the old Reggionistas, don't want to spend tax money on people from Albania or Morocco or China. So it's very difficult.

But now let me tell you about the most exciting thing. About ten years ago, they decided to build a huge International center. And it's called, 'The Loris Mallaguzzi International Center.' It is composed of two old cheese factories. And they want to make it an international center for knowledge. The center has many things in it, and many things are planned. And I've traveled all over the world; I've never seen anything like it.

It's unique. First of all, it has three preschools in it. And for the first time in 40 years, they have to two primary grades. So they're moving up. Then they have a wonderful play area for young infants with toys that you would die for. They're so beautiful. It couldn't be more contemporary.

Then they have the beginning of a science museum. Just one exhibit, they developed it over three years a ray of light. A light ray. And it's as big as a hotel floor. It's quite big. And light is explored in a hundred different ways. I thought it was just for middle school and adolescents, but in fact, they bring in infants and old people. Everybody is there. So it's like a science museum. But so far, with just one huge exhibition, which was developed by physicists. We call it state of the art, meaning completely contemporary. It could be anywhere in the world.

There's a historical part of the museum about Reggio. Amelia There's the offices of Reggio Children. Which is the international organization because there is interest in Reggio in 100 countries around the world. This is the international organization. And then they have the plans for two additional facilities. One is for what we would call, 'a bookstore.'

But they call it 'a librer, or libreria.' And they're developing this new concept of a bookstore. But it won't just be books. It will be multimedia. They will have all kinds of pedagogical things that parents can do with their children in the Libreria. The best way to explain this is whenever they first tell me about something, I don't understand it at all. And it takes me a long time to see that they are thinking about these things in a new way, In a way that I would never have thought of myself.

So the other thing I would call, 'a restaurant.' They call it, "the atelier of taste." And it will begin with something for children and families where you taste various kinds of substances, talk about the meal, and then you will go into something which looks like a restaurant, but it will use the same materials that you just explored, all local products, all healthy, and ten different ways of serving them. And when I read about it, it made no sense to me. But after they explained to me for about an hour I began to see, 'This is not a restaurant. This is something new. This is not a bookstore. This is something new.'

For 25 years I have said, "Reggio Emilia is not in Italy, it is in Scandinavia." And the Swedish people were the first people to discover the schools outside of Emilia (...) It combines democratic ways and the modesty with the Italian aesthetic tastes, the northern Italian Milanese aesthetic tastes and the tremendous sense of community. Even if people work in Venice, which is three hour away, they still say, "I live in Reggio."

Now for 40 years visitors to Reggio, they always ask the same question. They say, "Your schools end when children are six years of age. What happens afterwards? What is secondary school like? "Do they go to university? Do they become rich?" They have a wonderful answer, "Look at our community. Look at our city." Because success is not test scores or money. It's, "Does the community work?" But of course many people don't understand that answer. And then they begin to understand...

I say them, "The Mallaguzzi center should be about human possibilities." What is it that human beings can achieve using their minds and their hands? That's to me, what will make that center very special.

Open Captions Version: http://inclusionseries.com/reggio-emilia-and-me/проф. Хауърд Гарднър

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