He always repeated like a mantra «be careful here, please, listen to this which is important» attracting the maximum concentration of visitors when he led a guided tour in the Ethnographic Museum of Lussurgese, which he had helped to create in 1976. The maestro Francesco Antonio Salis was passionate and involving with his museum stories, full of information and anecdotes on the Luxurious peasant epic, with his candor, his goodness and his rigorously sweaty forehead.
The people of Lussurge called it Su Mastru par excellence, educator of children and adults, a good person who managed to reach the hearts of his fellow citizens and gain their trust, thanks to his innate empathy.
He is celebrated one hundred years after his birth by the people of Lussurge who keep a jealously guarded personal memory of him: due to his good nature, friendliness, liveliness and attention to the lower classes he was "a master of life".
«Salis saw his students as active subjects in whom he could stimulate observations, questions, curiosities and interests through concrete experiences. He used his trait of spontaneous irony, "he did imitations", and his creativity, through drawings, sketches, small portraits, to get in touch and spontaneously capture the sympathy of children", recalls Francesco Porcu, retired teacher, and one of the first collaborators of the UNLA Center for Popular Culture, where Salis taught thousands of people to become literate from the 1950s onwards, training them in life.
Precisely for this passionate experience of lifelong education he won the UNESCO Reza Pahlavi prize in 1967. The Oristano writer, of Ghilarzo origins, Antonio Pinna dedicated his latest literary effort “Francesco Salis” to su Mastru. A teacher for the community", a journey into his fascinating life, starting from the difficult post-war years where he fought illiteracy by educating shepherds, farmers, artisans, housewives, borrowing his education model from the pedagogist Anna Lorenzetto. «The book highlights his charismatic and innovative figure as a cultural and social animator who took care of cohesion and solidarity in his country and, in close connection with the UNLA, guided its civic promotion. With the OECE-Sardinia project (1958-62), however, it stimulated the development of the community, participating in the creation of the first cooperative society of weavers in Sardinia and other cooperatives", underlines Pinna.
Two days of celebrations : the Lussurgese Cultural Center for Permanent Education UNLA dedicated two days of study on Saturday 30 September and Sunday 1 October to the admirable figure of su Mastru . On Saturday 30th the theme is "The Cultural Center and its role in a continually changing community", from 9.30 to 18 in the Center hall. While on Sunday 1st we will talk about "The museum, a place for preserving objects and a place for participation", from 9.30 to 12.30. Important scholars, teachers and educators, cultural and museum operators, who knew and collaborated with su Mastru , will give their contribution to commemorate his figure as an intellectual and educator: from Felice Tiragallo of the University of Cagliari to Marco Mulas of Isre, from Alessandra Broccolini of Simbdea to Monica Stochino of the Superintendency, from the sociologist Alberto Merler to the anthropologist Bachisio Bandinu. And again his daughter Mimi Salis, Marcello Marras director of the Unla of Oristano, Maria Arca of the Cultural Center, Andrea Biancareddu regional councilor for Education, Vitaliano Gemelli president of the UNLA, the teacher Francesco Porcu and Antonio Bellinzas collaborators of the Cultural Center , therefore the journalist Giacomo Mameli. The choir Su Cuncordu 'e su Rosariu, of which Salis was a pygmalion, will accompany the two days of study.
Born in 1923, Salis began teaching in elementary schools after the war. In the 1950s, with the support of the UNLA, he educated the vast majority of the Luxurious population, eradicating rampant illiteracy, obtaining UNESCO recognition in 1967. With the children of the Center in 1976 he created the museum of peasant technology, one of first ethnographic collections in Italy of tools and objects of the many professions of pre-industrial society: carpenters, carpenters, winemakers, farmers and shepherds up to fullers. He was also a scholar of the archeology of the territory and of the Sardinian language, publishing several volumes on the limba "Study of the southern Logudorese Sardinian language".