Carla Rinaldi’s Open Questions on Education

One of Carla Rinaldi’s most recent public contributions, President Emerita of the Reggio Children Foundation, is the speech she prepared for the opening of the action-conference in Denver. She participated virtually on April 10 to pose open questions about the future of education to the participants of the PER Play, Explore, Research project. We present here the full version.  

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Hello! I’m happy to be here with you now, after many years filled with beautiful experiences and emotions, that we have shared along the way.

Over time, we had many possibilities and opportunities to be together.

We want to thank Boulder Journey School and the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver for being part of and co-founders of our Foundation, and for sharing this beautiful vision of childhood for so many years.

This vision is our mutual strength, as we both hold the belief that it can help humanity become even more human.

We are also deeply grateful for the network built here in Denver around the Play, Explore, Research Project, and to the LEGO Foundation, which supports this initiative along with many others they are promoting worldwide.

I am certain that you will have a playful experience, creating a dialogue on the importance of play in our daily lives, and helping us all to rediscover the joy and vitality that play brings to life.

Childhood does not exist. The question is about social, political, and cultural role of Chilhood, and whether the existence and citizenship rights of Childhood are to be truly known and recognized.

Each one of us and every society must have the courage to act with policies to scream the existence of these rights.

This is the famous “right to have rights”. So let’s ask ourselves: in a reality as generous as yours, as ours, where for years you have been working and building high-quality experiences, can we say we have Childhood fully recognized as a central subject of our society? If not, what can we do so that this can happen?

Meeting nature through digital. Digital is becoming more and more part of our nature as human beings: digital is becoming our way of learning and thinking. This is the big research question that we have to explore. Another big issue is how to learn together, when the digitalization of knowledge seems to be leading us more and more toward individual and isolated learning.

Childhood can help us also this time, children and nature, Because children ARE nature.

My personal frequent question, in these times, is about the meaning of “human”, “humanity”. I wonder, if  boys and girls know, today, the meaning of “human”?

Let’s hope it is not too late to rediscover the listening to nature that helps us to be more human. I remember very well, you have an easy relationship with Nature, you caught the essence of genius loci.

Nature is listening to us. A nice contrast that is able to break the pattern that only the human being can make oneself more human.

It is, on the contrary, listening and nature that make us living beings among other living beings with whom we share our destiny and with whom we have a mutual salvation.

So, how can Childhood help us to find a true, natural digital dialogue?

Artificial intelligence, natural intelligence and education. About Artificial Intelligence, that is pervading but also simplifying our lives. Schools and institutions around the world are proceeding without a shared orientation.

The great question is indeed: what is intelligence?

We have thousands of possible definitions, including those offered by our friend Howard Gardner years ago, who stated that there is not just ONE intelligence, but rather multiple intelligences.

As much as we are willing to change our ideas, I would not give up on this path. In fact, artificial intelligence, which relates to a number of information that is impossible for us, must be oriented by natural intelligence, and above all, by the right questions.

And who is stronger than us in making questions, as we have learned from children?!

So, don’t be afraid.

We have the tools, the creativity, the imagination, the compassion, to be able to protect our freedom of thought.

I don’t think we’ll ever see Artificial Intelligence playing.

Let’s play with Artificial Intelligence, training our Critical Thinking and the ability to ask our own questions. What is your point of view about that? Which are the borders you see?

“Growing new worlds", what do you see in the future of education? What do you see in the future of education? This is the question for you. First of all, we have a huge problem of falling birth rates. And this issue brings us back to the initial one. The culture of childhood, the passion for childhood. A necessary cultural change. Indispensable, to allow childhood to exist.

Let’s think about the policies in our countries. Are there policies capable of recognizing and positively promoting the presence of  children?

Coming back to our question on “being human”.

A child is the oldest being of the history of our humanity.

The one that is always the same, in every culture. A child still is child. A child who is born and in his first years of life, is basically the same as he/she  was hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago.

We absolutely must treasure the uniqueness that each of us is. A unique and unrepeatable piece of life.

As unrepeatable is the time we spend together.

The future of education will be there if there is childhood.

And so today our task is above all political.

And now, the floor is yours, my friends.

Thank you.