When in Canada, eat the way Canadians eat

[Ray]

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Manila Times
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
SPECIAL FEATURE

Filipino child punished in Canada for table manners

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

Luc Cagadoc’s table behavior is traditionally Filipino; he fills his spoon by pushing the food on his plate with a fork, his mother, Maria Theresa Gallardo, said.

But after being punished by the school lunch monitor more than 10 times this year for his mealtime conduct—including his technique—the 7-year-old told Gallardo said last week that he was too embarrassed to eat his dinner.
 
“Mommy, I don’t want to eat anymore,” Gallardo said 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 a spoon and fork, instead of only with one utensil, the Grade 2 pupil said the lunch monitor moves him to a table to sit by himself.

Upset over Luc’s story, Gallardo confronted the lunchtime caregiver the next day and, on April 13, she telephoned the school’s principal, Normand Bergeron.

The principal’s reaction was more shocking. It brought her to tears. “He said, ‘Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat.’”

Gallardo, who is originally from Misamis Oriental, moved to Montreal from the Philippines in 1999. She was a former contract worker and now an immigrant.

“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,” she said.

Luc’s father, Aldrin Cagadoc, was also surprised by the principal’s comment. “I can’t believe that even the principal would say that,” he said. “A person of his caliber, I wouldn’t expect him to say that.”

Gallardo, who operates a daycare service 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 with the school authorities.

She disagreed with the lunch monitor’s approach to teaching children how to eat and said it is emotionally upsetting to Luc.

When she questioned Bergeron about punishing students for their table habits, the reply she got was: “If your son eats like a pig he has to go to another table because this is the way we do it and how we’re going to do it every time.”

The principal of the 387-student Roxboro school said he explained his position on using two utensils to Gallardo during their telephone conversation.

“I want them to eat correctly with respect for others who are eating with them. That’s all I ask. Personally, I don’t 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.”
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