Today we bring together Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE and Cristian Fabbi, Director of the Fondazione Reggio Children, for a deeply human and intellectually rich conversation about the future of early years education.

Ger and Cristian share personal stories and the work of their friend and colleague Carla Rinaldi — one of the world's most influential educational thinkers. They explore what it truly means to place children at the heart of learning. From the rubble of post-war Italy to classrooms in Soweto, Nairobi, and Napoli, the Reggio Emilia approach has quietly transformed how educators around the world understand childhood, creativity, community, and the very purpose of school.

This is a conversation full of warmth, courage, and genuine hope — a reminder that when we believe in children's potential, extraordinary things happen.

Key Takeaways

1. Start at the very beginning — literally

The Reggio Emilia approach insists that quality education must begin from birth, not age 3, 5, or 7. Neuroscience has since confirmed what Carla Rinaldi and Loris Malaguzzi argued decades ago: the 0–3 years are the most critical window for brain development and should be treated as education, not just childcare.

2. Children have 100 languages

Every child is born with the capacity to express themselves through music, movement, clay, drawing, storytelling, and more. The role of early education is to keep all of these "languages" alive, rather than narrowing children down to reading, writing, and arithmetic alone.

3. The environment is the third teacher

Alongside the child and the educator, the physical environment plays a crucial pedagogical role. Spaces should be intentionally designed to provoke curiosity, creativity, and collaboration — a principle as relevant to theme parks and museums as it is to nurseries.

4. Document processes, not just products

One of Reggio Emilia's most powerful innovations is pedagogical documentation — capturing the how of children's learning through observation, photographs, and reflection. This shifts the focus from testing what children remember to understanding how they think, discover, and grow.

5. Children are citizens from birth

Carla Rinaldi's conviction was clear: children are not future citizens — they are citizens now, with rights and responsibilities from the moment they are born.

6. Quality education is an antidote to social harm

The Fondazione Reggio Children works in communities facing criminality, poverty, and conflict — from Naples to Palermo to Soweto.

7. We must shift from "I" to "We"

A powerful reflection from Cristian: modern education has rightly championed individual development, but we've lost something vital at the community level. The next step is helping children develop their life projects together with others — rebuilding the communal bonds that hold society together.

8. Invest in foundations, not just outcomes

Ger offers a striking metaphor: we build houses by investing heavily in their foundations. Yet in education, the earliest years — the true foundation — receive the least funding and attention.

9. Research should be participatory and generous

The Fondazione's PhD programme is deliberately multidisciplinary — bringing together architects, biologists, poets, and musicians — with the goal of generating processes other educators can actually use, not just papers that gather dust on library shelves.

10. The Reggio Emilia approach is a philosophy, not a formula

It cannot simply be copied. A school inspired by Reggio Emilia in Indonesia will look entirely different from one in Nairobi — and that's by design. The approach adapts to local context, culture, and community, making it genuinely universal without being prescriptive.

Chapters:

1. 00:06 - Exploring New Themes in Education
2. 01:09 - Introduction to the Reggio Emilia Approach
3. 16:18 - The Legacy of Carla: A Reflection on Education and Humanity
4. 19:02 - Introduction to the Reggio Emilia Approach
5. 30:03 - The Importance of Community in Education
6. 34:58 - The Importance of Documentation in Education
7. 44:17 - Exploring the Role of Play in Education
8. 55:28 - Investing in Quality Education
9. 57:41 - Community Perspectives on Education and Citizenship

https://www.frchildren.org/en

https://www.reggiochildren.it/reggio-emilia-approach/

https://www.gergraus.com

Get the book – Through a Different Lens: Lessons from a Life in Education

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Hello and welcome back to the Ger Graus Gets Gritty series on the Education on Fire podcast. Now, earlier we had the first seven episodes in which we explored Ger's book Through a Different Lens - Lessons from a Life in Education.

We did this chapter by chapter and it included the benefit of hindsight. Children can only aspire to what they know exists.

Schooling versus education, navigating technology, the role we play, measuring what we value, and a final look back at Ger's experiences, impact and legacy.

Now in the next three episodes, we start the journey of sharing thoughts, ideas and conversations around these three key the future of early years, the future of schooling, and the future of higher education.

Now, today, I'm delighted to say that we're going to start with a conversation between Gare and Cristian Fabbi, director of Reggio Children Foundation.

This organization promotes the world famous Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education and aims to improve the life of communities around the world by promoting children's rights starting from that quality education.

Now, it's a real privilege to bring you these remarkable insights and I hope they inspire you with the vision of a world in which children are placed firmly at the heart of education. Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Fire podcast. The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world.

Listen to teachers, parents and mentors show how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Hello Gare and Christian, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Fire podcast.

This is a fantastic opportunity for us to sort of post Ger and I's seven episodes based on his book to talk about the different areas of education in terms of age and the sorts of things that we are able to put into action based on the, the interests, the, the conversations and our sort of visions for what education might look like going forward, but also in the, the actions of things happening now.

So Ger, why don't you start us off with a sort of, a little sort of transition from our sort of seven episodes in, into what we're looking at trying to, to explore here today.

Thank you, Mark and hello again, Cristian. It's always good, it's always good to see you.

Well, I suppose even the Sound of Music had a song and it called We Start at the Very Beginning and, and, and I, I don't think we in, in schooling and in education. I actually don't think that we, we do that very often.

I think we start sometimes at the age of 14 and sometimes at the age of 6 or 7, and sometimes we don't start till 18 and, and we certainly don't start at the very beginning and, and in a way that's where Cristian's work and the whole Reggio Emilia approach became really important to me. I mean as a, as a means of introduction.

Museums, libraries, galleries, essentially that Reggio Emilia thing, that Loris Malaguzzi thing, the founder of Reggio Emilia Approach, which was that the environment is the third teacher. So you minute, the minute you take learning outside the classroom, you're into different environments.

And of course my other handicap, if you were at the time, was that I was secondary trained. So I was a German teacher predominantly for young people aged 12 to 18.

So I remember really clearly talking to many colleagues and then being pointed in the direction of Reggio Emilia, the Reggio Emilia approach, early years and started to familiarize myself as much as I could with what all of that stood for.

Because I, I think I need your help in thinking this through properly from the child's point of view. Because of course the other thing that happens with schooling is everything's top down.

And there is a big question as to whether children learn in school or whether they're being taught prescribed menus of curricula that we call the National Curriculum.

Teachers are given a list of things to teach which they then being tested as to how well the children have remembered what they've been taught, all that stuff.

So, so I got a reply from Carla after a little while and, and I, I took a flight to, I think it was to Bologna at the time, from Manchester there were direct flights got on a train to Radio Amelia and, and met with Carla and it, and it felt like a real interview.

I, I, I, I sat in this room and she was there with one or two colleagues and I was being asked all sorts of questions as to why was I there and what, why was I interested in their work. And so I spent the day there and we had a nice lunch and we had dinner in the evening and we kind of got on.

So I at the time had an annual conference always around Christmas time for all the Children's University managers worldwide. And we invited Carla to be the keynote speaker, one of the two keynote speakers.

The other keynote speaker was a very well known British Canadian born architect and museologist called James Bradburn who was a was an expert in learning in museums.

What I, what I didn't know at the time is that Carla and James A were very good friends and, and B that James was an ambassador or advisor or whatever his capacity was for the fundazione for the Foundation Radio Children. So from then on, Carla I learned many lessons.

Carla and I stayed in regular contact and much of the work of the Children's University and later my work at Kidzania was very heavily influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach and particularly by the thinking of Carlo Rinaldi who to me is one of the world's greatest educational philosophers of the last 50, 60 years, perhaps even since the Second World War.

And Carlo Rainaldi, in many ways Loris Malaguzzi was the founder of the Reggio Emilia approach, but Carla Rinaldi was his apostle and, and, and then one, when Loris passed on, Carla and Ali took on on that mantle. Very sadly we lost Carla about just about a year ago and, and it's a gap, impossible, I think it's fair to say Christian to fill.

But, but in the meantime I'd also met Cristian Fabbi who was working alongside Carla because, and he'll explain this.

There is a foundation r your children and there is if you wish, a business ra your children, a more commercial organization and Cristian straddles those two. So Christian and I are now in regular contact.

We're trying to make sense of the world PC Post Carla and, and, and at the same time we're trying to keep her, her memory, her iconic memory alive, which I'm very happy to do. I'm also very happy to say that the idea of the round glasses came because she liked mine. So that's my very personal, my very personal take on this.

So Cristian, that was a very long winded kind of introduction, but I think an important one because there are a number of reasons why you and I talk.

Of course we talk because we both were friends, friends of Carla's and we also talk because we're both involved in thinking around the Reggio Emilia approach. So Cristian, I'm really grateful that we're here. I think the other thing that I would just throw in.

And it's really important because if we look at a child, one of the things that we do in schooling is we. We compartmentalize the growing up of a child, particularly the educational growing up.

So, so you are early years and then you go to primary school and then you go to secondary school, and then you go to post 16 or post 18, perhaps university, and then you become middle aged and then you become old and.

And if you think about it, what we define as play and learning for early years, within that compartmentalization you might call gamification for teenagers and you might turn into lifelong learning for 90 year olds.

So Carla increasingly started talking about 0 to 99 and I think whilst undoubtedly we'll be talking about the younger people today, it's worth bearing that 0 to 99 in mind. So, Christian, welcome and tell us something about. Tell us who Christian Fabbi is now.

First of all, let me thank you both for the invitation for this chat.

It's always a pleasure to talk with friends about education and unfortunately the space and the opportunities to have this kind of conversation is rare. So I'm very thankful for this invitation, first of all. Okay.

I am the director of the Reggio Children Foundation, Fondazione Reggio Children, created by Carla, as you said correctly, Ger. And I worked with Carla for many years. Then we lost a bit each other because I went to work at UNESCO and at unicef.

But we got back again in collaboration three, four, five years ago and we started this journey within the foundation, which is a journey around the rise of children.

And.

And around quality education globally, not only in Italy, not only Reggio Emilia, not only Europe, as Carla last conference was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, one year and a half ago.

So her desire was to bring the spirit, let's say the spirit of Reggio Emilia, or the sensitivity for education, or the flavour of Reggio Emilia at a global level, including also African countries like Kenya, South Africa, where we have worked and we are working right now, or Vietnam or others that we have. You had the chance to get to this talk together about.

Because Carla had this desire that not only in Reggio Emilia, children should be heard and should be considered as citizen, but every child in the world should have the same rights. And this was a. And that's. That disconnects very much with your reflection that she was a philosopher. I totally agree with you.

Carla cannot be just packed into the pedagogical field. Only she was philosopher. Absolutely. And she was also. She has been a politician as well, at the local level, from political, say, point of view.

But she worked and she was influential to many politicians globally, prime ministers or ministers of education, ministers of social affairs, ministers or other kind of political leader who wanted to talk to her about education and have her point of view. But she was also influential. For instance, she met Pope Francis, she met the Dalai Lama.

So she was the kind of person that wanted to have a conversation about education and politics with everyone, including also the lady at the bar, because she met the Pope and she met everyone who was interested in talking about education or democracy or policy. That was the great, you know, the human touch of Carla, that she wanted to have this kind of conversation at any level.

And she also taught us, how can I explain it, the. The pleasure of being together and talking together about education and politics.

Because you, you could really feel the pleasure she had when she had the opportunity to sit down with someone and have a conversation at the same time. I, I agree with you that she has been one of the most innovative thinker in my work.

I often meet, for instance countries or local organization who wants to invest in 0 to 3 that in Italy we call needle, that is called crash in the French speaking world, that is called child care, I think in the uk and that that space is considered like more care than education. Let's say for Carla it was the opposite.

She said by the beginning this is the real time that the most important time to invest in education, because that's where the children is developing, where the neurons are developing, where the brain is developing. And neuroscience, after a few years gave her the evidence that she was right. She was the one, she was the pedagogist.

In Italy, pedagogista is a mix between preschool director and head teacher. Just to understand the pedagogista has more pedagogical role, not an administrative role, but at a high level.

I was saying the queen, but it's better to say the reference person, because Carla didn't like this kind of words of the zero to three educational world. And still when we go around and we meet preschool system globally, they always Show US Schools 3 to 6, 4 to 6, 2 to 6 if we are lucky.

And Carla was very stubborn in insisting that also from 0 to 2, from 0 to 3, you have to play an important role as an education system. And now the world is going in this direction.

So probably I like when you say philosopher also because she Reflected very much about the human development, not only the pedagogical or didactic or educational, you name it, activities. And that's where Carla was really great. And I think that we still have a lot to discover.

We, as a foundation, we are lucky because Carla gave us all her notes and, you know, all the reflection that she was writing. And I think that we have a lot still to discover. Just make, let me make an example and then I give you back the floor.

The last few years after the COVID the pandemic, she started to reflect very much about the body in a world that was reflecting on AI, on digital tools. She said, no, guys, we have to stop and reflect about the body, about the sensation of the body, the body in the space, the skin.

Because we have seen during COVID the cost that we have paid at a political, at a democratic, at an economic level of not taking care of our bodies. And she was starting a very strong reflection and also talking about AI.

She was reflecting the last few days, one year ago, she was reflecting about, okay, there is an artificial intelligence. Is there also an artificial sympathy or is it possible to have in the future artificial sympathy or empathy?

And that was a, this shows the kind of capacity of Carla to reflect about the contemporary time.

Thank you, Cristian. I, I, I totally concur. I have, as, as you're speaking, I have, I have a picture of her here because she was a family friend.

And, and I have, as you were talking, there was so many memories going through my mind. She, she adored salt and vinegar crisps. Unbelievable. I, I remember she once stayed in a hotel here in Sheffield.

And, and on the breakfast menu was egg Florentine. And she walked into the kitchen and said to the chef, I was born near Florence. I have never heard of this egg Florentine. What is it?

And that, and, and when she went into the WH Smith said, Glasgow railway station, where she and I had been speaking at a conference, and she came out slightly panicky, saying, I didn't understand a word of what the man was saying when I tried to pay. So there were, there were a million of those kind of memories that, that bring in the, the kind of human factor.

And I think wherever I've been, and I know the same is for you, Cristian.

She, she, through her, her personality, I suppose, embodied so much of the spirit of what the Reggio Emilia approach stands for and hopefully will always stand for. She should always be reflected in that. Cristian, if you would, please.

The regio Emilia approach, for those of us who are less familiar with it, there is this brilliant exhibition, isn't there when you walk into the Loras Malaguzzi center, it's just phenomenal.

Could you talk us through where the Reggio Emilia approach came from, how it developed, what it is now, and how it works in its two components, Boasta Fondazione and Reggio Children? Yeah.

Thank you, Ger, for the questioning. Yes, it is important to contextualize also Carla's work from. From Reggio Emilia.

So Reggio Emilia is a small city in the mid north of Italy, and after the Second World War, a group of women started to struggle against the municipality and against the institutions because they wanted preschools. Not only preschool, they wanted quality preschools because they wanted to enter the labor market.

Was a time of great changes in Italy after the fascism. People felt free, they wanted to have a life, they wanted to develop a project, a life project.

And these women were very committed in having quality preschool.

And you have to know that in Reggio Emilia, different from other cities, in Reggio Emilia, which is our region, we didn't have a strong public education, early education system. And this was the opportunity for those women to start to create this system.

And he was hired to coordinate the development of this preschool system that started to develop at a municipal level, while in Italy the investment was either at the state level or private level. The municipality decided to follow this track and support these women.

And step by step, the city started to open 33 preschools, 0 to 6, some of them 0 to 3, some of them 3 to 6. Because in Italy system is still split, although we are going toward a zero to six system, but it's still like that.

And these preschools are still operated by the municipality. We have this theory called 100 languages, while where we. We think that every child has the right to express him or herself in any language.

And we think that children born with 100 languages. It's a metaphor, but I think it's a good metaphor that explains our philosophy.

And the role of preschool is to keep all of these languages alive, because we think that at the end of the preschool, of the school system, children are able to count, to read, to write, but all the other languages somehow got lost, like music, dance, body awareness, clay painting, drawing, you name them. So our role is to keep all these languages alive. And that's the reason why in our preschool there is a professional called atelierista.

It's a word taken by the French word atelier, which means.

Which is a professional that has competence both in education and in artistic languages, and that should support the children in the develop of this development of these 100 languages. The system developed along the way.

Malagusti met, for instance, people like Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Howard Gardner, all these influential scholars gave contribution to the development of the system, which continued to develop. For instance, now we have a conversation with the team working on mirror neurons.

So the system continued to have conversation with the science, with the pedagogy, with psychology, with the philosophy, with architects, because we think that it is important to continue to feed the approach with new ideas and with new knowledge.

People started to visit, to come and to get to know regime, especially from Sweden, then from the usa, and now from all over the world to try to take bits and pieces of this approach. I like Ger, when you said at the beginning, this is not a list of actions that you have to put in practice.

It's a philosophy, it's an approach, it's a way of seeing the human that you can apply to your system.

So a school that is inspired by regimelia in Indonesia is completely different from a school inspired in Regime that is in Nairobi, because it has a lot to do with the contextualization of the. Of the approach.

And this is a very important, because this is the main difference with other pedagogies, methods or methodologies, which have a prescribed set of activities, a way of assessing, supporting, observing children. But at the same time, this is. This is a strong point and the weakness as well, because everyone at this point can say, I'm inspired by regime here.

But this is the. The.

In the spirit of being a public system that is open today, we would say it's open source, so you can take the part that you want and develop on your own. But this is the part that we like very much.

And the great thing is that we have a lot of conversation with other educators at a global level, like care, for instance. And this feed our approach continuously.

So we say that we used to say that our approach changes every day because every meeting that we have with relevant colleagues can enrich our way of working and Change it a bit. Talking about the system, as you were explaining, Reggie Children. The company is committed to provide training and publishing.

It's a publishing company. They produce also exhibition and that they have the role of. Of offering the regiment approach to the different contexts that are interested.

While the foundation I am director of and that Carla was president of has more to do with research. We have a PhD together with the university course, together with the University of Modern Region for instance.

And we work very much with philanthropy in order to offer, if we can, quality education. 099 This is another good point, Gerd, that you got from. From car to offer quality education at a global level.

So we are working now in counties where they have no means, they have no resources to let me say to buy the. The professional development. So we find other ways to support education of these children.

As I said, for instance in Kenya, South Africa and Vietnam, probably soon in Ukraine as well. So we will try to work with this context. And what is nice because of the premises that you already is that we learn a lot from them.

I was talking about body before.

And when we have been working with these educators and children in Soweto, which is a very famous area in Johannesburg, where Nesso Mantella was born. We learned a lot from these children about how to dance, how to move the body. Maybe it's a stereotype, but it's just.

It's really true that if you go there and you really feel free to.

But we have learned a lot also in Nairobi when we have met at this school that is self sustaining because they grow vegetables on the roof and they have chicken to feed the children with eggs. So we have, every school that we meet have something, has something to teach us.

And this is very important because as I said, this continuously feed our reflection process.

So that's also I think the, the lucky part of working in education because in education you always meet extraordinary people who think about humanity in different way. And that has the, the. The. The. The goal of changing the society and making it more respectful and more open.

And when you work in these countries you have the opportunity really to meet people.

Like this last point that was very important for Carla and I want to share in this introduction is the work that we are doing in the south of Italy or in other areas. Also in the north of Italy, where there is a high level of local criminality. Carla said that quality education was an antidote to criminality. Why?

Because if you create a solid community in which everyone help each other, you don't need to go and make this kind of weird behaviors that happens here and there. So we are working, for instance, in Palermo, we are working in Napoli.

Second, we are working in Milano at Cuarto Jaro, all areas in which, unfortunately, there's a lot to do on this point.

And for us it's really interesting because we are learning a lot from parents, teachers, educators, and also children and politicians who want to make their society better. And in this process of continuous exchange, we also learn a lot from these local educational communities.

Yes, and I remember, Cristian, many conversations that I've had with Carla, particularly about the, the developments in Napoli and, and the whole contextualization, because I, I kind of facetiously sometimes used to say to her, oh, well, the Regio Emilia approach is really easy in Regio Emilia, because Regio Emilia is in the north of Italy. It is certainly was when I met with Carla first.

It is very middle class, so it is very easy to exercise, as it were, and further develop the Regio Emilia approach. But what does it look like in parts of the world that are severely disadvantaged, where there are many refugees and you can heap up all the problems?

And so we talked a lot about the contextualization, about how important it is to build communities, how the community in Napoli is invariably going to be different to the community in Reggio Emilia or Milano or Palermo, or indeed in other, in other parts of the world. And Carla's interest always was about the. Connect with those, those particular people in order to understand the children and the families better.

And, and one of the things that she visited my wife's school here in Sheffield, on. On, and was in touch with my wife about the school on a number of occasions. The school is in a very disadvantaged part of the city.

And the discussion very often was about, well, tell me more about your school, tell me more about your community, tell me more about the people who are there to make the difference. And very often, of course, the discussion then went alongside the thinking around parents and family members as co educators.

And then how do you evidence all of this?

So those, those conversations were important always, but also in a way that this wasn't just about making schooling better, this was about making education better and wider. And, and the conversations that Carla used to have, particularly as you use as an example, around the body and the awareness.

But, but it's linked to food and understanding food and growing food. But at the same time, in that wonderful restaurant that you have in Reggio Melia. Pause.

Where, where it is not just about the food, but it is also about the behaviour of eating together.

Of sharing food, of not having mobile phones and not having music in the background and, and, and, and in a sense that that beautiful place where you can go and you, I don't know, you sit at a table with four year old children and with 80 year old, old age pensioners or whatever we want to call people. And all of those things kind of came together under contextualization, then became incredibly important around the.

One of the key aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach.

You mentioned the work with the University of Modena and Regio Emilia and much of the research Project Zero with Howard Gardner and all sorts of things that went on elsewhere.

Carla incidentally also had the wonderful title inspired in South Australia where she worked directly with the government and at Adelaide University she got the title Thinker in Residence, which I think everywhere should have thinkers in residence. And of course she was very influential in the, in the direction South Australia as a state took educationally.

But one of the key aspects in that whole development and under contextualization and the research work that goes on with universities such as modern Reggio Emilia is the aspect of evidence, isn't it? It's the aspect of documentation. And that is I think where the Reggio Emilia approach is refreshing.

The way to actually look at, well, evidence related to, also related to quality and quality practice, but also related to achievement. Not just attainment, but achievement in the widest possible sense.

Talk us through that documentation piece please, Cristian, and how that becomes really important in research.

Yeah, thank you. Ger, this is a very, very at the point question. Let me start from reflection that Carla used to share with us.

She said we like to do solidarity through research. We like to make research together with the different communities that we meet because that's a way to grow together.

And when she used this word, making research, people of course think about quantitative research, research that you make in a laboratory with different tools and so on. For her, as you said, and you correctly pointed out, for her, sitting and having lunch talking about education was making research.

But at the same time she was very rigorous about providing evidence. She said we, we have to really show what we do. We have to show that it works. We have to show the learning process, not the product, but the process.

And this idea of working with documentation.

Documentation means to collect observation, take pictures, maybe also video of processes of children reflect on top of find out keywords, key concepts, strategies of the children about, about the learning process. And that was one of the main innovation that Reg brought to the pedagogical world.

The fact that you have to really show and provide the concrete, visual, also evidence of the processes of learning. And this is a strategy that a lot of people in the world is now trying to develop in different and many ways.

And this also is the openness of this concept. There's no one way only of making documentation, but you have to really make sure that you show the processes of learning that the children develop.

This is a key concept that Carla worked very much on. And she started with 0 to 3, 0 to 6, but then she wanted to go further. And for instance, last year we planned an AI camp for children.

And she said, I want you to really provide evidence on how the children teach AI. For instance, the children teach AI to recognize a brick or to recognize the kind of toys and so on, if you want to make any commercial.

But you understand what I mean. And it is important that children teach AI and that you document the strategies children can teach AI how to work.

So we, we bought an empty bot and the children started to teach the bot how to recognize, how to name and so on. And she said, what is important for us is not that the bot is able to recognize the Toyota.

It is important, the process that children put in practice to teach the bot.

And that's what you have to show because this is useful for other teachers, because other teachers can take it and maybe do it in another way, but still they have a process to work with. It's also a process.

It's also somehow kind of being generous, offering processes, offering strategies to other teachers, to other educators in a very open minded kind of style.

She said, we have to, we have to offer something concrete to other educators, not just to show, okay, this is our beautiful school, this is our beautiful system.

We have to offer processes so that the teacher can go home and the next day when he or she goes in a classroom, he or she can start practicing, starting by where you have work and maybe continue making it better and give us the documentation of the process so that we can also continue our process. So it's a sort of participatory and generous way of working that she had.

And going beyond early education was for her very important because she said the older the children are, the more they can do documentation on their own. I mean, they don't need, they can also, at a certain point, they don't need us.

If we teach them to reflect, to meet and reflect, as we used to say, to meet and reflect about the learning process, they can do it on their own without us.

And that's probably one of the reflection that she was thinking about also when she was starting to reflect about the school, out of the school, the school in the community, the school in different places.

Because she said, what is important is that we concentrate on the processes and that we offer processes to other educators and to other teachers and also to parents, and then they will continue.

Because this idea of the documentation that come from Carla, from Norris Malagusi and from all the equip that worked on it, it's something that is a sort of groundbreaking process because people used to test the products in the past, still it happens very much also nowadays with documentation, you test the process, you still you see if really children understood and developed their own way of doing it, because if they are able to do it with this process, they are able to translate it into other processes. And that's where you really build the critical thinking.

Yes, and it's an interesting thing how you talk about young people creating their own documentation and their own evidence base and self reflection.

Because one of the key aspects that sits within the Reggio Emilia approach and doesn't easily sit within schooling systems is that we trust the children and that Carlos Carlos quote, you know, we must trust the children as much as they trust us. And much of that approach is based on that thinking, because without that element you can't do that.

I think it's also worth pointing out, I'll name the name that the Reggio Emilia approach is not just about schools, it is about communities, as we, we already said, it's about the whole, the whole research that links to that. So you would include the university as part of that community, but it is also about working with NGOs, working with charities.

Certainly if I think of the Children's University and the work with Kidzania, I'm currently speaking with a possible new theme park development in the United Kingdom, which is going to be, by the looks of it, quite a big thing.

And my instant piece of advice to the developers has been you must look at the principles of Regio Emilia, if you're serious about using the environment as the third teacher on an ongoing basis to the point where the child wants to come back.

And actually elements, as we know from Kidzania, as we know from the Children's University, elements of that documentation and reflection with children and young people isn't necessarily a nice ring binder or a nice folder. Some of it just sits up here and stays up here. Right. And. And so we need to think broadly about that.

You also work with, as an example, with the LEGO foundation, right? Quite substantial.

Yeah, yeah. The strategy of our foundation is to work both with the private philanthropy and with public funding.

And since then, but also earlier, the foundation started to support our research processes with the scope of analyzing play. And we have developed this project, Play Explore, Research in Italian spare per.

That means four in Italian pair Play, Explore Research, which is at the intersection between playful learning, inquiry learning and making research. It's something that we started already, a part of this process already is finished, but we are going to continue.

And that's where we like to work in unusual scenarios for us, like as I said, Soweto, like we did in a community based school in Vietnam and so on, because it's a way to, to develop evidence the children are able to learn and to be creative and that they have a master 100 languages everywhere in the world because they are human. And if they are human, they have 100 languages.

And children, of course surprised us because of the infinitive competencies that they have in this context.

So it's just a matter of being humble, if you let me use this word, and believe in the potential of the children, credit them with competencies that they have and believe that they are able to learn and master different languages and competencies. When you make this change in the mindset, you, you see education in a completely different way.

And you go every day in your classroom, what, no matter if it's an early education classroom or apply my classroom with the pleasure of making research together with the children, what are we going to make research about today?

And that from then on, as Carla taught us, is a pleasure because it's making a sort of resonance between the different brains who started to vibrate together. Last speech from Carla was about her meeting. She. She gave this speech one more or less one year ago. And it was just in. She.

She talked about her experience when she met the Dalai Lama and she said, when I, when I touch his hand, I. I felt a sort of vibration because it was the Dalai Lama. But then she said, but if I am attentive, every child, every person has a vibration, have a vibration.

So it's a matter of being able to really feel the vibration of everyone. And it was a message, I think it was a message, a humble message that everyone has something very interesting to say.

Not only the, but every human something interesting to say and to offer if we really want to listen to the people we have around.

Yes.

And, and of course she's, she's right and it is about that, that thing that she sometimes talked about when it came to children was almost like ultra super personalization. It was about getting to know those children so well so that you could then.

Because we use that word personalization in schooling quite a lot, but actually we don't personalize.

At best we, we have groups of children for whom we try to cater whether they are gifted and talented or whether they have special educational needs or a disability or whatever. But the, the actual personalization piece I don't think were there by any stretch of the imagination. We have a, a long way to go.

I, I, I just wanted to look at the research and particularly the PhD studies.

I, I had some conversations with, with the, the friends and colleagues at the University of Modena and Regio Emilia, especially Lorenzo and we often talked about so what?

And, and I'm, I'm always a slightly skeptical of particularly PhD studies, for example, because PhD studies, if we're not very careful, fill library shelves. And my question about so what. So talk to me about the PhD studies and what difference.

What is the actual impact to a child in Napoli or in Soweto of, of a PhD study that comes out of Reggio Emilia and Modena?

But I, I might put the question on you help us in doing this kind of exercise. Ger.

Okay, no, Yes, I totally agree also with the skeptical component of your question, which is critical and then so welcome because it's true we might end up with a collection of good tastes who can stay in a shelf and that's it. So our, our PhD is multidisciplinary. So it's not only about education. We have architect, biologists, poets, musician.

We think that we should support the 100 languages of the university students. And that's the reason why we, for instance, we had, then we had a doctoral student who was a poet. She finished her studies last year.

She got a very, a very good graduation with a book of poems, for instance. We have, as I said, musicians.

We had a biologist that, that discovered the strategies of the plants to talk to each other through vibration in the environment and she find out a tool on how to measure it.

But we also had a PhD student who made her research about how to make the environment in the jail where the parents receive the children a playful space.

So in Reggio we are experimenting now a room where there are different corners, different toys and where the parents who are in jail can meet once a week the children and stay in a space that is respectful of the rights of children. So just to answer your question, we try, but I'm sure we can do better. That's why I said you should help us. We are trying to make.

To have a PhD that is things out of the box that can find new strategies to make education, quality education in spaces where there is no or that can find new strategies or new ideas to work on education. We are working very much on AI, but we are also working very much on storytelling, for instance.

And we are trying to find out new ideas to feed not our schools, but the entire world. Some of them like that, some others are not.

As in a normal I think course, PhD course, the idea is to have the 100 languages in mind as our main theory. But we, I think we have. This is the space where I'm now is their research center and it's a.

It's a space in which they can experiment different languages with the children, with the adults, between themselves and make concrete research and not just sit in front of a book or of a laptop.

Because this was the idea of Carla, to have a PhD in which people have to make research in the real meaning of discovering something, something new like the children starting with an open ended question and develop in different direction.

She used this matter for all the circles that has to enlarge progressively until you have found something that is interesting, no matter if it answers or not your initial question. But it has to be something that can really make you grow as a person and as a scholar. There's still a lot to do to be very honest and transparent.

Yeah, thank you, Cristian. I think it's really important but, but the, the, the that the recognition that the qualification is not the end of the journey.

We do it, we do it with children in schools, don't we?

We kind of go well you, you do in, in England you do GCSES and you do A levels and then the minute you've passed the test, the aim of the last six years is to pass that test. And actually the aim and impact should be much wider than that. And the same, I think you're right, applies to research and PhD studies.

And it's worth at this point also saying that for anybody interested, they should go on your website to look at some of the wonderful books and publications that are available, they are all truly outstanding. Some of those books, the one that springs to mind is probably my favourite two.

One is about food and the other one is about the children and their city, which is truly wonderful. And actually walking round Reggio Amelia, you realize how embedded the Reggio Emilia approach has become in the city itself. Yeah, I think that's. That.

That's just unbelievably fantastic.

And I would recommend to anybody Carla Rinaldi's book in dialogue with Reggio Emilia, as I think anybody who works for children should read and should think as a result of that book. I have one more question, Christian, which is about. If you look at the world at the moment, we are all responsible for the state that.

That the planet in. In the widest possible ways in, in terms of ecology, but also in terms of politics and behaviours. Yeah.

And so if we're all responsible, how do we create a world where in our young children are better at being responsible than we are? And I suspect that the word role model fits in there somewhere. And what are your thoughts and what would Carla's thoughts have been around that?

Not an easy question, Ger, but a very tempting one.

Well, first of all, I think that investing in quality education is always an easy but very true answer because education is always about humans, is about future, is about how we stay together.

And.

But the. The real point now probably we. We have. This is my personal opinion, so I'm. I'm responsible for what I'm saying. We have focused very much on them.

The fact that every child should have the possibility to develop their own life project. Okay. Have the freedom to do it, use the language that they want, have an environment, it's supportive and so on.

We probably now have to focus more on. We have to add something.

The children should be able to develop their own project together with others, because the problem is we have lost the community level.

If you see countries like Iran, for instance, just to mention something that is on the pages of every newspaper, they come from the Persian community. 27 Centuries of history that we don't really understand. I don't want to mention if we agree or not with the world. So. But we.

It's visible that we don't understand how they think. We don't. We don't. We think that they want to live like us, like occidental people, with a car, with a house, with a salary, with.

But probably they have other level within their community that they keep them together and we are not able to do this. So it's necessary to think about also from a community point of view, not only from an individual point of view.

And this was the message of Carla, again, because you know very well that she wanted first of all to go and eat together, have a coffee together, have dinner together.

So that was the kind of feeling we have to stay together, sit together, share our life, create a larger family of friends, which is probably something that can give us new ways of seeing the contemporary time. And the reason why in some countries they think different from us, but they still are able to go on with their own society, with their own community.

And if we start to think also from a community point of view, not only, but also from a community point of view, probably we would have a new way of understanding the world. And that was the message from Carla.

Yes, I totally agree.

And in terms of the, the investment side of it, I go back almost to the beginning of, of our talk, which is that when it comes to investment, we need to start at the very beginning.

And if you think about how we develop things, how we build houses, we build houses by investing an extraordinary proportion of the money in the foundation so that we can build as high and as securely and as aspirationally as possible.

It strikes me that in, in political schooling system, we put the least money in the foundation and the danger is that the house will collapse at some point. I think that's one observation. And the other one is that Carla's view on citizenship was an interesting one.

So sometimes we think of young children as future citizens, whereas her view very clearly was that you are a citizen from the minute you're born.

And that means that from the minute you're born you have rights and responsibilities and, and perhaps in, in creating a world whereby our young people are better at being than we are. Are.

It needs to start with that recognition from Carla Rinaldi that simply says you are a citizen from the minute you're born, and therefore you have rights and responsibilities. And it becomes our role to make that happen in a better way. And that's.

I understand that's much easier said than done, but one of the things that we also need to be around that is a little bit more humble, particularly as so called developed countries or Western countries. Christian, it's been a complete joy to spend time with you again. I look forward to us talking much more and much more in the future, my friend.

It is almost the anniversary of Carlo Ronaldi's passing. Carla, happy anniversary. And be sure that you will not be forgotten ever.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Ger thank you, Mark, for the invitation.

It is always a pleasure to have a chat with people who have ideas to share, as we said at the beginning, and I think it has happened also today. Thank you very much.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.