The relationship between financial education and society: a sociological perspective

In the last five years, after the financial downturn that hit most Western economies, there has been a flourishing of financial and economic education projects in Italy, aimed mainly at increasing financial literacy and awareness of different targets, from primary school students to the elders. The paper’s purpose is to classify a sample of 120 projects targeted at students – collected through a 3years web-monitoring research - according to the functions that these project give to financial education and the representation of the relationship between financial education and society which is underlining them. Moving from classical theories of sociology of education, we describe three interpretative perspectives: functionalist; conflictualist and interactionist perspective. Each of these representations carry value-implications and limits that need to be accounted before projecting new activities in the field.