Danilo Marrone

Biography

I was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to an Italian-American father, Richard, and a Swedish-German mother, Anneliese, on April 4, 1968 (the same day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated). My father taught high-school science and math at International and American schools around the world. My mother was a linguist who spoke seven languages fluently. She, too, was a teacher. My maternal grandfather, Hans Boettge, founded the German School of Stockholm in the 1950’s. Teaching is in my blood.

I have been a teacher in various capacities ever since I graduated from St. John’s College (The Great Books Program) in Santa Fe, NM, in 1990. I taught at the LSC (Learning Skills Center) and assisted in teaching an English class to tenth graders at the American School of The Hague in Holland (1990-1991). After that I moved to Tunisia for a year and taught phonetics at the Université of Tunis (1991-1992). I then returned to Sweden to find my Swedish roots and received my M.A. in the History of Science from Uppsala University in 1994. In 1995, I was accepted as a Ph.D. student in the History of Books and Libraries at Lund University. My research focused on the Bibliotheca Walleriana.

I applied to several colleges and universities in the U.S.A., but my heart was always set on St. John’s College, also known as The Great Books Program, where education seemed to be the end itself, not just grades. I was elated when I found out that I had been accepted. The next four years were some of the best years of my life--surrounded by brilliant students whose eagerness to learn was as intense as my own. I graduated in 1990 and moved to Holland where I embarked on my teaching career. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. For more information about this unique college, read this excellent article:

SJC Article