The “maturità” oral exams went splendidly. [...] My last exam was Latin and Greek with Professor Marchi. The exam was meticulous and long. At the end, she asked me what I wanted to do. I said that, in one way or another, I wanted to teach in schools, become a professor. My role model was Mario Themelly as well as my professors at the lyceum, but I also remembered my first-grade teachers: a young nun, Suor Rosa, Prof. Urban and Prof. Nuccia Musatti. It looked like the most beautiful job in the world to me.
We are at the Awards Ceremony of the 9th edition of the Global Junior Challenge, dedicated since 2017 to the memory of Linguist Tullio De Mauro (Torre Annunziata, 1932 – Rome, 2017). His wife, Silvana Ferreri, Professor of Modern Languages and the University of Tuscia in Viterbo, participated in the presentation of awards and accepted to remember her late husband’s commitment to school and his priorities: students, first and foremost, whom he always defended even when the press attacked them, claiming they were dunes and more ignorant than students in the past, than today’s adults. And teachers, starting with elementary school teachers, an excellence of Italian school.
Prof. Ferreri then cose to read two excerpts from the book "Parole di giorni un po' meno lontani" (Il Mulino, Bologna 2012): dedicated to students (BOÁΩ, pgs. 138-141) and teachers (La Normale, pgs. 240-244).
She concluded by saying: "Tullio was this: study, rigour, but also affection for the people around him. This is my memory for you.”
Her reading in the Campidoglio’s Aula Giulio Cesare was followed by a heartfelt applause.
