Education, education, education! Or is there something else that comes first?

The knowledge-based economy, that’s the focus nowadays to achieve sustainable economic growth. And especially for developing countries, this path presents a huge opportunity to catch up.

So it’s education, education, education I hear all the time. Almost seems like real-estate where it’s location, location, location.

And it makes sense, right? But education is content. And the substance towards which this content has to be directed, is our brain.

Many people mistakenly take a healthy, well-developed brain for granted. But in many impoverished developing countries (and Argentina, where I live, is one of them) this is not the case. One of the harshest consequences of poverty is the irreversible brain damage amongst children due to malnutrition.

So teach whatever you deem important. But where a seed will never flourish to its genetic potential when planted in insufficient grounds, education, being either cognitive or social, will never be effective when a brain is damaged.

Hence, the biggest challenge for these countries is to properly address this issue, to first and foremost prevent brain damage due to malnutrition.

Prof. Dr. M?nckeberg (Pediatrician and Economist) discovered the inhibiting factor for sustainable economic growth due to malnutrition in his homeland Chile and developed and implemented an approach in the early 70’s for detecting and treating the effects of malnutrition. This leading his country on a path of remarkable growth.

Together with Dr. Abel Albino (a well-known Argentinean Pediatrician) they then advanced in defining what was to be the logical next step, prevention. This resulted in the highly effective CONIN (Cooperadora para la Nutrición Infantíl) methodology that can be summarized as:

Preserve the brain to be able to educate it. The 1.000 vital days of proper nutrition and stimulation.

Future economic growth largely depends on knowledge-based activities.

To create an educated, knowledgeable workforce, you need education.

For education, you need HEALTHY brains.

For healthy brains, you need CONIN.

www.conin.org.ar