c r o s s+r o a d s

Pupil Disciplined For Eating Pinoy Style

Kind'a late reaction, but the subject below touches every Pinoy senisitivity in me

“Mommy, I don’t want to eat anymore,” Luc a grade 2 pupil at Ecole Lalande told his mom after he was disciplined for eating with spoon and fork. “My teacher is telling me that eating with a spoon and fork is yucky and disgusting."

The Chronicle reported that the boy is being transferred to another table to eat by himself, whenever he uses spoon and fork.

Upset over her son's story, the mother confronted the school's lunchtime caregiver and telephoned the school’s principal. But the principal said ‘Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat.’ This brought her to tears , and she said 'I find it very prejudiced and it’s racist. He’s 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.' Luc’s father, Aldrin Cagadoc, was also surprised by the comment. “I can’t believe even the principal would say that,” he said. “A person of that calibre, I wouldn’t expect him to say that.”

Read the news story here

Equally interesting is a comment to a similar post in another blog. Perhaps from another Canadian, excerp as follows.

I am so sick to death of this.

I am sick to death of having to defend Canadian Society to every Tom, Dick, Fung, and Harry that seems to have a problem adopting to the culture and society of a foreign nation they chose to immigrate to.

The moment they realize that some of their customs – although welcome in their ‘homeland’ .. may not be acceptable or tolerated here. And this upsets people such as this woman in the story attached – it upsets her to the point where she is now stating that Canada is a racist nation.

Part of me wants to slap her face for saying such a horrible thing about Canada; [ a country she saw fit to adopt after her own apparantly wasn’t good enough to remain in ]....

Jesus!! Someone should have instructed her upon proper table etiquette while she was learning her impeccable English. The kid looked like a makeshift Hoover vacuum cleaner – shovelling food into his yaw like it was his last meal!! Oh yeah… I saw it. The poor child’s humiliation was completed on the 6 and 11 o’clock news. After this little media coup hits the school yard – not only will this poor kid not want to eat in front of anyone, he probably won’t want to go to school either...

Teach him English, send him to school in his Gap jeans and I Pod, thrust him face smack in the middle of Canadian culture.. but don’t teach the child proper table manners – and meaning proper Canadian table manners. Yeah.. that’s right.. don’t give the poor kid any social graces at all and then scream racism when he is naturally reprimanded by peers or figures of authority. Yep.. some smart that is.

Every lickin thing you ever were taught, and will teach or have taught your children will be undermined if this woman is successful in raging on about Canada being racist and not tolerant of adopting – and I quote – traditional Filipino table etiquette.

The painful part of the comment is the fact that Pinoys chose to leave their homeland whom they don't find fit to stay, then criticize the country who adopted them. Urrrg.

Offending? Or painful truth?

posted by ASKSonnie @ Sunday, May 07, 2006