Boy's eating habits lead to international protest

[Guest Warwick Green]

Not surprising that this has a "he said, she said" dimension to it. But I would really hope that our education system has better things to worry about than whether students eat with a fork or a spoon.

Boy's eating habits lead to international protest

The way seven-year-old Luc Cagadoc eats his lunch has led to an international protest.

Luc used to eat his lunch at his Montreal school with a fork and spoon. That was he did eat that way until one day his teacher told him it was wrong.

According to Luc it wasn't very nice the way she put it. "She said, I'm disgusting, I'm a pig, I'm a clown by the way I'm eating," said the young Montrealer.

Luc says he was punished and moved to another table away from his friends for eating the way Filipinos have traditionally eaten. Luc's mother, Maria Theresa Gallardo, says her son "was traumatized. He was emotionally hurt inside."

Gallardo, an early child educator herself, said Luc had always been a good student. Now he doesn't want to go to school, and comes home for lunch everyday.

Gallardo said she tried to get help from the school principal, but was told Luc should adjust to Canadian way of eating. "Every time your son eats like a pig, he'll be disciplined," Gallardo says she was told.

The school board put out a news release saying the problem is a disciplinary and etiquette problem, not a cultural one. The board said it hopes to settle the matter between administrators, the school and the family.

But things have moved way beyond that.

For days the story has been making headlines in the Philippines - and on Friday it sparked a protest outside the Canadian embassy in Manila.

The Philippines ambassador to Canada has written a stern letter saying he considers the school board's action an affront to the Filipino culture.

Anti-racism groups say its time Quebec schools start educating the educators about cultural sensitivity.

Maria Theresa Gallardo says she will file a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission on Monday.

Fo Niemi, executive director for the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, says the issue is an important one.

"Basically school discipline can discriminate, unintentionally, in terms of its impact on the children, especially children from immigrant or racial minorities."

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/20...oc05052006.html

[betsy]

Not surprising that this has a "he said, she said" dimension to it. But I would really hope that our education system has better things to worry about than whether students eat with a fork or a spoon.

Boy's eating habits lead to international protest

The way seven-year-old Luc Cagadoc eats his lunch has led to an international protest.

Luc used to eat his lunch at his Montreal school with a fork and spoon. That was he did eat that way until one day his teacher told him it was wrong.

According to Luc it wasn't very nice the way she put it. "She said, I'm disgusting, I'm a pig, I'm a clown by the way I'm eating," said the young Montrealer.

Luc says he was punished and moved to another table away from his friends for eating the way Filipinos have traditionally eaten. Luc's mother, Maria Theresa Gallardo, says her son "was traumatized. He was emotionally hurt inside."

Gallardo, an early child educator herself, said Luc had always been a good student. Now he doesn't want to go to school, and comes home for lunch everyday.

Gallardo said she tried to get help from the school principal, but was told Luc should adjust to Canadian way of eating. "Every time your son eats like a pig, he'll be disciplined," Gallardo says she was told.

The school board put out a news release saying the problem is a disciplinary and etiquette problem, not a cultural one. The board said it hopes to settle the matter between administrators, the school and the family.

But things have moved way beyond that.

For days the story has been making headlines in the Philippines - and on Friday it sparked a protest outside the Canadian embassy in Manila.

The Philippines ambassador to Canada has written a stern letter saying he considers the school board's action an affront to the Filipino culture.

Anti-racism groups say its time Quebec schools start educating the educators about cultural sensitivity.

Maria Theresa Gallardo says she will file a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission on Monday.

Fo Niemi, executive director for the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, says the issue is an important one.

"Basically school discipline can discriminate, unintentionally, in terms of its impact on the children, especially children from immigrant or racial minorities."

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/20...oc05052006.html

Boy, it's a good thing he didn't bring the traditional condiment called "bagoong". That should've cleared out the cafeteria fast!

As for the protests...that's over-reacting imho.

[Guest Warwick Green]

Boy, it's a good thing he didn't bring the traditional condiment called "bagoong". That should've cleared out the cafeteria fast!

As for the protests...that's over-reacting imho.

I looked it up. "The smell can be extremely repulsive to Westerners" it said.

[betsy]

Boy, it's a good thing he didn't bring the traditional condiment called "bagoong". That should've cleared out the cafeteria fast!

As for the protests...that's over-reacting imho.

I looked it up. "The smell can be extremely repulsive to Westerners" it said.

Yes. It's made with very tiny shrimps. It smells of strong anchovies....gone bad.

When I was new in Canada it never occurred to me about the effect of the smell to others. I was sauteeing it when I noticed my two housemates going to each and every room....they looked seriously worried and there was some sort of urgency as they were "searching". 'What's happening?"I asked.

"We're looking for a dead rat." they replied.

We had a good laugh after we've realized what was causing the commotion.

But recently I think they've done something to the product that gets imported to foreign countries to minimize the smell. The ones I occasionaly get do not have that kind of stink anymore.

[PocketRocket]

Back to the original story; unless the kid was slopping food all over the place, then who cares what untensils he chooses to use???

Spoon, fork, chopsticks, wooden stick.

Like this really matters???

I think that the only issue is whether or not the teacher truly acted in a demeaning manner toward to the child.

[Guest Warwick Green]

Back to the original story; unless the kid was slopping food all over the place, then who cares what untensils he chooses to use???

Spoon, fork, chopsticks, wooden stick.

Like this really matters???

I think that the only issue is whether or not the teacher truly acted in a demeaning manner toward to the child.

We will never know what really happened since the human rights commission and the attendant platoons of lawyers are now involved so everyone will now be walking around with their hands over their ass. Maybe the teacher merely did accost him because he was sloppy but it doesn't take much any more for people to cry discrimination.

[uOttawaMan]

I'm going to tell my little sister to eat her lunch at school with her bare hands.

Then we'll be on the front page of the news somwhere in the world, and I'll have my own thread on mapleleafweb. com

[Guest Warwick Green]

A study done in the UK shows that many kids are losing the ability to use a knife and fork because they are brought up on junk food. So they are eating with a spoon. This kid then must be in the vanguard of culinary practices.

[Guest Warwick Green]

Comment from an English friend. Used to be a schoolteacher.

BUT I can vouch for the knife and fork thing. Only they mostly don't use spoons they use FINGERS.

I found that out when I transferred to Parklands Primary school. At lunchtime we had to sit with them and when I told them to use their knives and forks they didn't know how. WE had to have them play in the home corner in class to practise with plastic ones. I was working with Liz at the time and we were astounded, both coming from more "civilised" schools so she thought she'd find out WHERE they ate.

Fewer than half the class even HAD a table at home to sit up to for eating. It was on laps, on newsppaper on the floor said one. On a towel on the floor said another but mostly watching tv. You don't even need a spoon for fish fingers, beefburgers, chips or pizza unless you have beans with them. And certainly not for a breakfast of a packet of crisps. You eat them on the way to school.

[betsy]

ASSUMING the incident reported above is accurate, I could only say that racism aside, there is one glaring fact that reflects badly on the principal.

For someone holding such a position...he terribly lacks diplomacy and tact in dealing with people. Refinement is obviously not one of his qualities. And obviously, he is not a good role model, not only to his students...but also to the other employees. So there's no need to wonder about the abrasiveness of the lunch monitor.

Someone ought to lecture this man that being abrasive and telling a parent (no matter what race they belong to), "if your child eats like pig..." is not only going to put the parent in an automatic defensive stance...but also inviting an adversarial response.

[Guest Warwick Green]

Will we ever know the truth?

Incident might have been a misunderstanding

ALLISON LAMPERT, The Gazette

Published: Monday, May 08, 2006

A West Island mother said she never anticipated her 7-year-old son's eating habits would provoke international outrage, including protests in her native Philippines.

"I am overwhelmed by the reactions of the Filipinos worldwide, I (was) not expecting that it would go this far," Maria Theresa Gallardo Cagadoc said yesterday.

"We are normally a very quiet family. I was just an angry and outraged mother at the time who didn't know where to go."

What began in April in the lunchroom of a Roxboro elementary school has sparked front-page headlines in the Philippines, a rebuke by the Filipino ambassador to Canada, a lawyer's letter from the school board against Cagadoc and an outpouring of emails from around the globe.

In fact, what happened that day could easily have been a misunderstanding, The Gazette has learned.

The incident, which has prompted Cagadoc to file a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission today, all started when Luc told her at the dinner table that he was ashamed to eat in the Filipino tradition - breaking up food with a fork and then pushing it into a spoon.

Earlier that day, Luc Cagadoc, a lean, bespectacled Grade 2 student at Ecole Lalande, had been reprimanded and forced to eat at a table alone by the school's daycare lunch monitor, who told his mother Luc ''eats like a pig.''

Allegations that Luc had been punished for his culinary traditions rocked the Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys, a French schoolboard with an increasingly diverse student body.

The board had been at the centre of debate over ethnic tolerance last year when one of its high schools banned a Sikh student from wearing his Kirpan - a religious dagger.

"Everyone believes this has been blown out of proportion," said Jean -Pierre Rathe, commissioner for Ecole Lalande, a diverse elementary school with 400 students. "It's not and it was never a question of racism. At the Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys we have children from all over the world.

"If we were racist, our schools would be empty."

The school has been inundated with emails, some of which were threatening, Rathe said. Montreal police were told of the threats and a security guard was posted outside the school Friday.

But the board has never revealed exactly why Luc was punished. Cagadoc said she was told by the lunch monitor that it was linked to him eating with a spoon and a fork.

According to a schoolboard source, Luc had been eating slowly that day. The lunch monitor warned him that there were only five minutes left to finish his meal. In response, Luc began shovelling food into his mouth, alternating with his spoon and his fork. He dribbled food and the other children laughed.

That's when he was moved to a different table.

Cagadoc, who runs a daycare and is completing a diploma in early childhood education at Vanier College, said neither the monitor, nor school principal Normand Bergeron gave her that explanation.

"When I approached the (monitor) the following day she didn't mention that to me at all," Cagadoc said. "If she had told me something like this ... I would have reacted differently."

Cagadoc, who speaks limited French, said her conversations with the monitor and school principal were in English. Bergeron, she said, told her that: "Here in Canada, this is the way we eat, you should learn the ways Canadians eat.''

The incident - the first of its kind - has sparked debate within Montreal's Filipino community, said Salvador Cabugao, consul-general of the Philippines in Montreal. Some residents are blaming the school board, while others - like himself - prefer to wait until the Cagadoc's complaint is heard.

He downplayed the importance of a Friday protest held outside the Canadian embassy in the Philippines.

"There might be some people who are mad, but there is still a long line of people waiting to come to Canada."

Cagadoc, who came to Canada in 1999, is appealing for calm.

"I cannot blame the Filipinos and all the other concern(ed) citizens worldwide for their reaction; like myself they were insulted and offended by the statements of the school's principal and educator," she said.

"I really appreciate all their support, emails, phone calls and prayers ... and I hope that soon, this will be over."

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news...82-00d5920e382b