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   Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada school

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Topic: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada school (Read 7050 times)

Pau
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Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada school
« on: Apr 27^th, 2006, 8:23pm »

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Filipino table etiquette punished at local school
Lunch monitor tells student his eating habits are disgusting BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

http://www.westislandchronicle.com/pages/article.php?noArticle=6063

Luc (right) eats in traditional Filipino fashion, with a spoon and fork, as his mother Maria Gallardo and sister Hannah look on. The seven-year-old says his schools lunch monitor calls the habit disgusting and has punished him for it. Filipino table etiquette punished at local school
Lunch monitor tells student his eating habits are disgusting

The Chronicle

A Roxboro woman has filed a formal complaint with a local school board after her son was disciplined by a lunch program monitor at Ecole Lalande for eating in what she says is a customary Filipino manner.

Luc Cagadocs table behaviour is traditionally Filipino; he fills his spoon by pushing the food on his plate with a fork, his mother, Maria Theresa Gallardo, says.

But after being punished by his schools lunch program monitor more than 10 times this year for his mealtime conduct including his technique the seven-year-old told Gallardo said last week that he was too embarrassed to eat his dinner.

Mommy, I dont want to eat anymore, Gallardo says Luc told her at the kitchen table April 11. My teacher is telling me that eating with a spoon and fork is yucky and disgusting.

When he eats with both a spoon and fork, instead of only one utensil, the Grade 2

student said the lunch monitor moves him to a table to sit by himself.

Upset over Lucs story, Gallardo confronted the lunchtime caregiver the next day and on April 13, she telephoned the schools principal, Normand Bergeron. His reaction brought her to tears, she says. His response was shocking to me, Gallardo, who moved to Montreal from the Philippines in 1999, told The Chronicle. He said, Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat.

I find it very prejudiced and its racist. Hes supposed to be acting like a professional. This is supposed to be a free country with free expressions of culture and religion. This is how we eat; we eat with a fork and spoon.

Lucs father, Aldrin Cagadoc, was also surprised by the comment. I cant believe even the principal would say that, he said. A person of that calibre, I wouldnt expect him to say that.

Gallardo, who operates a day care out of her Roxboro home and is close to completing her studies in early childhood education, wrote a letter last week and lodged a formal complaint to the Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys (CSMB) yesterday.

She disagrees with the lunch monitors approach to teaching children how to eat and says it is emotionally abusive to Luc. When she questioned Bergeron about punishing students for their table habits, she says he replied that, If your son eats like a pig he has to go to another table because this is the way we do it and how were going to do it every time.

But Bergeron says it was Lucs eating technique combined with his behaviour at the table that was inappropriate that day, which is why he was moved. Luc can be turbulent, he said yesterday. Like other children, he is frequently in situations where we have to intervene. Its normal, hes a child. He is in a period of learning.

The principal of the 387-student Roxboro school said he explained his position on using two utensils to Gallardo during their telephone conversation. I said, Here, this is not the manner in which we eat.

I dont necessarily want students to eat with one hand or with only one instrument, I want them to eat intelligently at the table, he said. I want them to eat correctly with respect for others who are eating with them. Thats all I ask. Personally, I dont have any problems with it, but it is not the way you see people eat every day. I have never seen somebody eat with a spoon and a fork at the same time.

CSMB spokesman Brigitte Gauvreau says the board will not comment due to confidentiality procedures until Gallardos complaint is filed and she makes a public statement.

« Last Edit: Apr 28^th, 2006, 7:12am by Pau »

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Pau
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished at local sch
« Reply #1 on: Apr 27^th, 2006, 8:34pm »

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I'm sorry for our Canadian friends but I this act of done by the staff of this Canadian school is unacceptable.. they were very inconsiderate of other cultures.. and they have been doing this to kids.... we all now live in a global community and we should all be aware and conscious of each others cultures and traditions....

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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada
« Reply #2 on: Apr 27^th, 2006, 9:46pm »

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I better ask my cousins about this! I thought it's not an issue in Canada. They never mentioned anything having problems with using both spoon and fork.

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Isle_be_back
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada
« Reply #3 on: Apr 28^th, 2006, 12:31am »

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Them darn foreigners...sheesh! Wink

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Pocket
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada
« Reply #4 on: Apr 28^th, 2006, 5:50am »

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Again, it's a case that was mishandled. How much better it would have been to ask the boy why he ate like that (if they really didn't know), then explain that it's good to learn the table customs and etiquette of the country they are in.....then teach it, and not as punishment. He could still eat in his customary way at home. When you live in a culture not your own, you need to adapt.

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Pau
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada
« Reply #5 on: Apr 28^th, 2006, 6:46am »

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yeah I agree... they should teach in a way that wouldn't discriminate a certain culture and ways or affect the morale of a certain individual much more for a kid...

the case stated above does not reflect only to a Filipino way of eating but also to other Asians who eat using chopsticks....

I agree though that a foreigner should adapt to the culture where they live into.... Filipinos generally blend in with the way of life of the country they take to be their second country...

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luci
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #6 on: Apr 28^th, 2006, 2:50pm »

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This teacher would probably be mean to any of them.
I agree, this is definitely unacceptable.

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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #7 on: Apr 28^th, 2006, 2:55pm »

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I doubt his behavior was wrong..Probably an excuse to move him

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Rhune
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #8 on: Apr 29^th, 2006, 10:26am »

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Luci's right, this is a simple case of a bully in a position of authority. It's one thing to say we eat this way, and other to say he's eating like a "pig". I mean we're not talking that he picked up everything with his fingers, sloshed it around the plate and slurped it up. He was using utensils! Part of me wants to cry out, so what if he used them differently, but a part of me is still incensed over the situation we are having with immigrants here in the US and it would hypocritical for me. I do agree that he should learn to adapt to how they eat as a culture when he is at school or in public, just as he needs to learn to speak the local language. I guess it's learning to speak the local body and social language, and that should be as important as learning to speak the verbal language of where you live.

That said, this lunch lady is a bully and should be fired. She is not fit to work with children. The principal should be taken to task for her insensitivity, she just could have handled this a whole lot better. Her comments come across as rude and showing no remorse for how this child was treated. No child should be bullied by the adults who are supposed to be teaching him, to the point where he is afraid to eat in his own home!

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Heather
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #9 on: Apr 29^th, 2006, 1:55pm »

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I agree. I don't get why she got so upset about it.

You should see how my brother eats sometimes and he's 10. (sorry Popit, if you see this Wink

) He doesn't even want to use a spoon. Good thing he doesn't do it at school.

So.. what's wrong with it? Huh

I don't like that lunch lady that's for sure.

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Jeff
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #10 on: Apr 30^th, 2006, 6:37am »

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I don't see what's so bad about eating with a spoon.

Now sporks... there's something to watch out for. You don't fool me bastard child of the spoon and fork! I'm onto you!

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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #11 on: Apr 30^th, 2006, 11:56pm »

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on Apr 30^th, 2006, 6:37am, Jeff wrote:

Now sporks... there's something to watch out for. You don't fool me bastard child of the spoon and fork! I'm onto you!

Not to mention those mutant foons.

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Pau
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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #12 on: May 5^th, 2006, 4:05am »

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Food fight angers Filipinos
Montreal school disciplined boy for `eating like a pig'
May 5, 2006. 05:31 AM
SEAN GORDON
QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEF
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/A rticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146779411907&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

MONTREALIt all began as a lunchroom dispute over a grade 2 student's table manners, but has now escalated into an international cause célčbre with Filipino authorities accusing a Montreal school board of insulting their country's culture.

The case of 7-year-old Luc Cagadoc has become front-page news in his parents' native Philippines and a Quebec-based rights group says it will haul a suburban Montreal school before the provincial human rights commission after it repeatedly disciplined the slight, bespectacled boy because he allegedly "eats like a pig."

The Philippines' ambassador to Canada issued a statement of support for Cagadoc's family and Montreal's Filipino community, which he said was rightly offended by the school's reaction to the way the boy eats using a fork and spoon.

"The embassy considers the alleged incident an affront to Filipino culture," Ambassador Jose Brillantes wrote. "To assert one's accepted eating practices, which after all are most proper and which have become part of one's cultural identity is, in fact, encouraged under the Canadian immigration policy on creating a Canadian mosaic rather than a melting pot."

School officials, for their part, contend the punishment Cagadoc was separated from his classmates and made to eat alone had to do with disruptive behaviour, not slovenly eating.

The Commission Scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys, which operates the École Lalande where Cagadoc studies, sent a letter to his parents last month saying an April 12th "educational intervention" was "in no way aimed at the cultural practices of your community. It was very specifically linked to the way your son was ingesting his meal that day and in no way to the method or utensils used to bring his food to his mouth."

The letter, penned by the board's associate director-general, said "these types of incidents are commonplace" and that lunchroom monitors in the school were simply trying to enforce "a certain etiquette" and "the respect of food, of peers, and, of course, security."

A spokesperson for the board said the affair has taken on "astronomical and surreal proportions" and that the school considers it "an educational question first and foremost, not an inter-cultural problem"

At issue is the traditional Filipino method of using a fork to mush food into a spoon before swallowing the contents.

Cagadoc's mother, Maria Theresa Gallardo, said she's been advised by her lawyer not to grant interviews until the dispute is resolved, but spoke briefly about the toll the affair has taken on her son.

"It's not easy; he doesn't want to go to school," Gallardo said from the family's tidy bungalow in the leafy northwest Montreal neighbourhood of Roxboro.

According to family lawyer Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Montreal-based Center for Research Action on Race Relations, Gallardo was told by the school's principal during a telephone call that "this is not the way Canadians eat; you have to adapt to Quebec society."

School officials also allegedly called Cagadoc's eating habits "disgusting."

"She was also told that it wasn't a very intelligent way to eat, and in another incident witnessed by her husband, the teacher who removed Luc from the lunch room asked whether Filipinos wash their hands before they eat," Niemi said.

Cagadoc's parents will make an application in the coming days before the Quebec Human Rights Commission seeking unspecified punitive damages for separating him from the other children on at least 10 occasions because of the way he eats.

The complaint will allege insensitive and racist behaviour on the school's part and Niemi pointed out that the board is the same one involved in the so-called "kirpan case" involving the right of a baptized Sikh student to carry his ceremonial dagger on school grounds.

The Supreme Court recently ruled in the student's favour, overturning a blanket ban on the knives.

Niemi, an outspoken activist and strident critic of racial profiling and discrimination, said he is also currently pursuing a pair of other rights complaints against the board, and added "we hope in this case that the Quebec human rights tribunal will consider the racialized aspect of some school discipline."

Niemi said he is also pursuing other rights complaints against the board.

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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #13 on: May 5^th, 2006, 9:11am »

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Hmm I don't know that I'm in favor of having children wear knives on the playground, ceremonial or not, regardless of the cultural practice. We're not talking about eating with a spoon, we're talking about carrying knives into the midst of play. Now, a child raised in that culture might not ever take their knife out and start trouble, but what's to stop a simple bully from taking it from them and starting trouble? Yes, they would be punished for it, but what damage might be done first?

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Re: Filipino table etiquette punished in Canada sc
« Reply #14 on: May 5^th, 2006, 9:22am »

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Here again, there are cultural differences clashing with the adopted country's customs.....and laws. Letting any child carry a knife in school is totally weird. As Rhune stated, what's to stop someone else from taking it from him and doing damage to another? Why go to a new country for a new life, if you're going to cling to the old customs and the old life? Where is common sense?

We weren't there to judge whether Luc was treated fairly, but I have to feel sorry for a kid ostracized and separated from other kids. Public humiliation is never a good teaching tool.

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