Politicizing Children's Meals Is The Last Thing to Do

Gyeonggi Province seems to be one of the worst places for hungry children. On Monday, the council of the nation's richest province moved to torpedo the regional educational office's plan to provide free lunches for all fifth and sixth graders in the province. The council, in which the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) enjoys an overwhelming majority, instead passed its own plan to offer meals to only ``poor" students in all elementary and secondary schools.

``Schools are not places providing free meals," said Governor Kim Moon-soo backing the council's move. ``Giving lunches to all students, rich or poor, is a populist policy."

If there are people who might think the GNP's ``selective" free lunch plan is more reasonable than the indiscriminate school meal system, they are confusing educational policy with welfare policy. Just ask those adults who experienced poor childhoods which was more painful: skipping meals or receiving free lunches amid wide publicity about their poverty? A considerable number would point to the latter.

GNP politicians seem to think free school meals is an act of charity for the poor, but one doesn't need to be a pedagogue to see it is just part of education. If schools providing free lunches are to be regarded as soup kitchens of sorts, as Governor Kim believes, all elementary and secondary schools providing free education should be considered ``free hagwons."

The supply of adequate nutrition ― not just in the physical sense but also the mental aspect of respecting their privacy and human rights ― should be the foremost policy of any government to meet its basic educational goal of cultivating healthy citizens in both body and spirit.

It is all the more pitiful in this regard that the conservative-dominated provincial assembly decided to deep-six the free lunch bill submitted by the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education to frustrate its progressive chief, who has also recently unveiled the ``ordinance on students' human rights," which called for allowing students to decide on their own hairdos and attendance in after-school lessons.

Aside from the pros and cons over the decree, lamentable is the nation's educational environment, in which even a state's most fundamental duty of keeping hunger at bay, especially for younger generations, has to be swayed by politics and ideologies like this.

Deplorable as it is, the happening in Gyeonggi Province is no coincidence, considering that the Lee Myung-bak administration has dropped some 54.1 billion won earmarked for providing free lunches to poor children on Sundays and during vacations, from the central government's budget for 2010.

So our heart goes to the four opposition parties and civic groups, which have just launched a campaign to provide free meals to all of the nation's 7.6 million students, saying it would cost just 3 trillion won a year, one-tenth of the government's budget for reshaping Korea's four longest rivers, or just 3 percent of its scheduled tax cuts for the rich, until Lee leaves office in 2012.

GNP officials are now bragging about Korea being one of the 15 largest economies in the world and its hosting of the G20 summit. What they should first realize, however, is that advanced countries have long regarded education, of which school meals is a part, not as the responsibility of individuals but as a duty of the state.