YOU READ ABOUT IT ALL over the place these days?all sorts of well-meaning people urging President Noynoy Aquino to make quality education for all Filipino youths the most important focus of his administration.

The logic of this collective piece of unsolicited advice goes this way: If young minds are educated, a whole world of possibilities and potentialities makes itself productively and prodigiously available to the nation, with untold benefits for everyone.

That?s really great?but, if I can add my own two pesos? worth of similarly unsolicited advice to the discussion, my take on the subject of good education for everyone is: Think about nutrition first.

You think?well, of course, it goes without saying! But, that?s the point: For many underprivileged and thus undernourished children in this country, it doesn?t happen. Sure, there are some feeding programs for schoolchildren here and there, but not nearly enough.

Prospects

Besides, by the time malnourished kids get to be of school age, it may be too late, since their brains may already have been negatively affected and their future prospects severely circumscribed by their lack of nourishment from birth?and even in their mothers? wombs.

So, before even talking about spending billions on education, let?s talk about spending corresponding billions on nutrition for all undernourished Filipino babies and children?to make absolutely sure that, by the time they go to school, their minds are healthy and ready to be filled with all of the knowledge they need to make good, productive lives for themselves, and for the country as a whole.

How did I arrive at this insight? From sad, even tragic, experience:

Some years ago, I was tasked to organize a series of workshops in the performing arts for some Gawad Kalinga communities. The idea was to get the best teachers to train deprived youths in writing, acting, directing, dancing and music, so that they could become good, creative performers and articulate their own, unique reality for everyone else to learn and benefit from.

Worthy mission

That was a truly worthy mission, so I readily agreed to get good mentors, and I myself handled the workshops in acting , scriptwriting and directing. To make sure that the students would attend classes regularly, they were brought to the training center by bus or jeepney from different Gawad Kalinga communities. Well over a hundred young people came, eager to be ?liberated? by the arts from their heretofore circumscribed circumstances.

Alas, the laudable ?experiment? turned out to be only a partial success. The kids and their mentors worked really hard, despite the heat and extremely basic ?school? conditions. But, the output of the workshops was sadly limited, simply because, despite everyone?s best efforts, some of the students? undernourished minds could only assimilate so much information and training.

Concepts

As the artistic concepts got more detailed and subtle, their young minds struggled to understand?but eventually fell short. It wasn?t so bad in the acting workshop, since the young actors could instinctively dig into their emotions for their raw artistic ?capital.?

But, when it came to writing and directing, which need more ideational and technical comprehension, some of the students? young, malnourished minds simply couldn?t stretch widely or deeply enough to keep up with the accelerating levels of information and education.

So, the bottom line is: Before implementing sweeping educational reforms for everyone, please think nutrition for all malnourished Filipino kids. It would be money best spent.