For the record

Organizers of the recently-held Green Philippine Highways tree-planting project are claiming to have set a new world record for the most number of seedlings and saplings planted at the same time.

Originally hoping to plant half-a-million seedlings and saplings along major highways nationwide last August 25, the organizers claim more than 800,000 were actually planted, far, far eclipsing the 300,587 planted by India in 2005 to set the present record.

If these numbers are correct, there is no doubt the Philippines would snatch the record from India hands down. But the record is not the important thing. What is important is that a huge number of seedlings and saplings have been successfully planted.

Even more important is making sure these seedlings and saplings, now that their roots are in the ground, do not get frustrated in their natural progression into trees. For it is trees that this country needs, not a plethora of world records.

In the context of our national standing, amassing world records does not in any way add weight in our favor on the scale of confidence with which the community of nations will always have to test us in the arena of international relations.

Indeed, this growing penchant for world records only heightens perceptions that we are a nation obsessed with the frivolous, that we lack the seriousness and resolve to go for the things that really matter.

Over the past couple of years, the Philippines has embarked on a series of quests for world records - most number of people kissing in public, longest barbecue grill, longest suman, longest longganiza, biggest shoe, etc, etc.

It is not clear whether we made it to the records in any of these undertakings. What is starkly clear is that these undertakings, whether successful or not, have not made our lives any better.

The truth is, world records in the context of national life are but bonuses to what we are as a people. They are but little extras that we can add to how we really feel about ourselves and how we go about leading our lives.

World records do not put food on the table or a roof over the head. They do not send children to school or make the streets safer and less filthy. Without the basic necessities that a growing number of Filipinos are surviving without, world records do not mean anything.

On the other hand, our relentless pursuit of them both insults and upsets the system of priorities which this country ought to be pushing before its face. If there is one world record we should aim for, it is for the longest sustained stagnation of an entire nation.

"There was a time in the mid-50s when the Philippines was in the same league as Japan economically and academics-wise. Fifty years down the road, we are not only lagging behind, we are almost dead last in the Asean region."

Those words are not mine. They are the words of Lucio Tan, one of the country's leading industrialists. But he did not stop there. "Our leaders and educators know what went wrong, they just don't have the political will to correct the mistakes of the past."

Of course Mr. Tan was not talking about world records. But he was talking about virtually the same thing - the collapse of our system of priorities. He was lamenting the steady decline of our proficiency in the English language. Maybe there is a world record in that too.