“Our task, regarding creativity, is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible.” Loris Malaguzzi
From the start, the Reggio early childhood programmes reflected spontaneity and responsiveness to new ideas—an ‘emergent curriculum’ that was a far cry from the rigidity of the public schools. As Malaguzzi described these after leaving his job as a middle school teacher, ‘The work with the children had been rewarding, but the state-run school continued to pursue its own course, sticking to its stupid and intolerable indifference toward children, its opportunistic and obsequious attention toward authority, and its self-serving cleverness, pushing pre-packaged knowledge.’ By contrast, in the new school there would be a conscious embracing of surprise, of not-too-much-certainty, an acknowledgement that as life itself is unpredictable, so must education be.