Finance, legality and education must go together. It is from the union of these three that the foundations can be created for a company that knows how to ensure that financial literacy is not for the few, that the issues of savings and money are within everyone's reach, that creates internally antibodies to avoid fraud and scandals. The world of politics, institutions, schools and parents met on these issues in Rome on Tuesday in a round table promoted by the PattiChiari consortium. In introducing the works, the president Filippo Cavazzuti spoke of a "cultural bet" that PattiChiari has put in place. Because "it is only through financial education that conscious citizens can grow up". And the bet starts right from the schools, with a synergy between the Ministry of Education, local authorities and territorial banks that should bring finance to the school desks.
Even the Bank of Italy has taken the field, and since 2011 it has launched programs in elementary, middle and high schools to try to identify strategies to increase children's familiarity with financial topics. A project still in its infancy, but which has already borne fruit. Witness the case of Calabria, the first Italian region to set up a financial information program for the youngest. And it is no coincidence that the experimentation of the project started from there, in those areas of the country where the need for renewed attention to issues of legality is most felt. The rest of the country will have to wait.
The goal is that by June a law should be approved which institutes the teaching of financial education in Italian schools. But a mass intervention, on a national scale, is expensive, funds are needed in a rather asphyxiated period for the state coffers. A paradoxical fate, because it is precisely the economic crisis that originated in financial speculation that is delaying the implementation of policies that educate the new generations in financial culture.
