Theme: Listen to the future. Stand up for children’s rights.
On this day, as we mark the 36th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we, at REAIE, invite our members and the broader community to join with us as we renew our commitment to children as citizens of today and tomorrow, holders of rights, contributors to life, and architects of the future.
We believe the child is not a passive recipient of education, but a bearer of many languages, and potentials, a constructor of theories. The educational project of the Reggio Emilia Approach invites us to listen, with openness and humility, to the ideas, expressions, and interpretations of children; to engage with them in dialogue; and to co-construct educational spaces of respect, democracy, joy and wonder (Reggio Children, n.d.).
To listen to the future is to engage in reciprocal relationships of attentiveness, a form of listening that resists being reduced to surveillance and control and instead nurtures trust and shared meaning. Listening, as Carla Rinaldi (2006) describes, is an ethical and political act, a disposition that acknowledges the other as capable of meaning-making. It invites us to stay proximate to children’s thinking, to dwell with their uncertainty, and to be moved by the plurality of their ideas.
Standing up for children’s rights begins with this kind of listening, one that generates mutual understanding and reimagines education as a shared construction of community, meaning and possibility with the ultimate goal of creating a hope-filled future.
In the lead up to World Children’s Day, a group of 6 and 7 year olds were asked to consider their wish for the children of the world. Their thoughts certainly capture a brighter world.
I wish all children in the whole entire world were friends. I wish children could have a happy life and be happy forever. I wish children didn’t get into trouble. I wish that everyone in the world wouldn’t be sick. I wish that all children had water and food. I wish that everybody had a house. I wish no one was poor. I wish children and everyone didn’t have to go to hospital so much. I wish that all children have toys and books to read. I wish that all children don’t have a hard time in life. I wish that nobody would fight. I wish that kids are all protected. I wish everyone could be in peace.
I wish everyone enjoys their life.
Reflective questions:
- What does it mean to listen to the future, rather than ‘prepare’ for it
- How might our ways of observing and documenting children’s thinking and learning shift when grounded in reciprocal relationships of attentiveness and curiosity?
- When children experience being truly heard and understood, how might this reshape our shared possibilities for education and society?
