Parenting & Family Quote by Loris Malaguzzi

Malaguzzi’s most radical move here is grammatical: the teacher is told to “stand aside.” Not to lead, not to correct, not to perform expertise, but to create space. In a profession often rewarded for control and certainty, he frames restraint as an ethical and intellectual act. “Leave room for learning” implies learning is already happening - messy, partial, and stubbornly alive - and adult authority can crowd it out.

The subtext is a critique of adult-centered schooling disguised as gentle advice. “Observe carefully what children do” isn’t a feel-good nod to curiosity; it’s a demand for evidence. Children’s actions become data, not just anecdotes, and the teacher becomes something closer to a researcher: watching patterns, testing assumptions, noticing what the curriculum misses. The phrase “if you have understood well” adds a bracing humility. Misreading children is easy; projection is the default. Malaguzzi makes comprehension a conditional, not a given.

Context matters: as the pedagogical force behind the Reggio Emilia approach in postwar Italy, Malaguzzi was working in a society rebuilding civic life and rethinking authority. His emphasis on listening, documentation, and the “hundred languages” of children pushes back against standardized, one-way instruction. The closing “perhaps” is doing quiet but heavy work: it resists the education industry’s appetite for guaranteed outcomes. Teaching changes not because a new method is adopted, but because the adult has been altered by attention.