TARRA, GIULIO. – Priest, educator, and writer, b. in Milan on 25 April 1832, d. there on 10 June 1880.
Ordained a priest in 1855, in the same year he was appointed director of the Institute for the Poor Deaf-Mutes of the Province of Milan, to whom he devoted all his industry and zeal, seeking to improve their condition and facilitate their education. For this purpose, he replaced the mimetic method of Abbé De L'Epée with the pure oral method—the first to do so in Italy—which consists in teaching language through the teacher’s speech and lips. He also devoted his popular and limpid writer’s taste and art to the education of normal children in a series of works, most of which still deserve to be read and appreciated for their forthright educational purpose, even if at times it assumes excessive importance: Buoni esempi narrati ai fanciulli (Milan 1871); Dialoghi famigliari e scenici ad uso dei fanciulli italiani (there 1876); Novelle e canti in famiglia (there 1877); Serate liete, novelle e poesie dilettevoli, educative (there 1885); Cento e una storiella al focolare di casa (there 1896); but above all: Letture graduate al fanciullo italiano (3 vols., there 1862) and Racconti di una madre ai suoi figli (there 1862), in which the episodes drawn from the events of the Italian Risorgimento provide effective pages that foreshadow De Amicis’s Cuore. This book received an award at the Fifth Italian Pedagogical Congress of 1861. For the education of deaf-mutes, the following are noteworthy: Lettere ad un maestro dei sordomuti, in Dell'educazione dei sordomuti in Italia (Siena 1872), and Cenni storici e compendiosa esposizione del metodo seguito per l'educazione dei sordomuti (Milan 1880).