A constitutive aspect of cooperativism is linked to education and diffusion of ideals and cooperative values not only among thinkers and intellectuals but among all the population.

During the first congress of Italian cooperators, held in Milan in October 1886, it’s said:
“The Congress recommends to companies themselves to devote a part of their profits to educational purposes, organisation and general improvement of the working classes, whichever way profits are distributed in the cooperative societies”

Other contributions in this regard:
Luigi Luzzatti:” Cooperating doesn’t require the work of an upper room of scholars but simple and good spirits which get the seeds of their emancipation from the heart rather than from the mind (...) ”

Alfred Marshall: “ Cooperating has the purpose to improve every man’s quality, forming in this way excellent human beings”.

Stefano Zamagni: “ I foresee a bright future for the world of cooperation. And I like to start from this annotation: the first coop was created in Rochdale in 1844. What a lot of people don’t know is that it was clearly written in the statute that the 2,5% of the incomes have to be spent in libraries, reading rooms and evening classes in subjects such as maths, political economics and French. In a period when still nobody thought about investing in the human capital, the Rochdale equitable pioneers society understood the strategic importance of culture”