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THE CINEMA IN EDUCATION
THE CINEMA IN THE SERVICE OF THRIFT AND PROVIDENCE PROPAGANDA
(THE INTERNATIONAL THRIFT INSTITUTE) Manager : Filippo Ravizza.
Providence, Thrift ! Oh ! remembrances of far-off times when, as schoolchildren, we went along to educational ceremonies all excited by the pleasant prospect of mixing with a crowd of other children in surroundings different from the usual hall, and with our curiosity fired by what we were going to see and hear. But speech followed speech, or one alone lasted throughout the ceremony. The words, all very fine, all persuasive but on the whole monotonous, sounded in our ears but very soon their meaning ceased to penetrate our understanding, so that when at last they concluded on the grave necessities and stern duties of life, the heads of the grown-ups were already nodding with an air of bored assent, and the mouths of the children were open in unrestrainable yawns.
Since then, so many things, God be thanked, have changed, for, otherwise, amidst the showy, deafening, violent and multiple advertisements that are nowadays rained down on adults and children alike, the appeal to providence made on abused motives and with abused means would go altogether unheard and be made in vain.
Certainly, there is not one among educationists and men occupying public offices or invested with public responsibility who can disregard the great importance of thrift, and the profound repercussions that the variations of this factor have on the economic and spiritual structure of the whole of society, so that to speak here of the pressing necessity
of propagating the principles of thrift on an ever vaster scale among the people and among children would be tantamount to trying to force doors that are already open.
This necessity, realized by governments and by institutions to be a true social duty, has not only caused the motives of providence and thrift to be made more effective and in keeping with the present psychology of the people, but has led to the increasing use of the new propaganda media offered by modern technique, in order that these motives might be more deeply and more effectively imprinted on the mind.
It is for this reason that the Savings Banks, which have always been the leading promoters in every country of education in provident measures, have had recourse to the cinema and will do so in the future to an even greater extent.
Truth to tell, not everyone has fully understood the special and economic value of the Savings Banks, namely of those institutions which, for the purpose of social education and with no aim of profitmaking, collect the savings of the people, invest them in the most fertile fields of national economy and allocate the whole of the profits to public utility works. Some wrongly consider them institutions of the past, bound to the period and to the social environment in which they arose, living on the heritage of a venerable but now superseded tradition. They are, on the contrary, live and robust organizations developing a vital function, essential to the
3 — la ingl.