Filipino Disciplined for Eating With Spoon and Fork

A teacher in Montreal has repeatedly disciplined a Filipino immigrant's son for eating with a spoon and fork, according to a recent story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

According to reports of the Montreal newspaper The Chronicle ... the teacher, who watched over the boy's second-grade class during lunch break at the Ecole Lalande in Roxboro, reprimanded the [boy] for not eating "the Canadian way," using only one utensil.

The reports also said the school principal himself had agreed with the teachers's handling of the boy's "table behavior."

When the child's mother phoned the school to complain, the principal justified the action because "your son eats like a pig," the reports said.

The mother and other parties outraged by the incident said the child's way of eating -- filling a spoon by pushing the food on his plate with a fork -- was "the traditional Filipino way," an expression of his native culture that was supposedly welcome in a free society.

According to the story, the teacher punished the boy "more than 10 times this year" by ordering him to eat at a table by himself, and called eating with a spoon and fork "yucky and disgusting."

The school principal, Normand Bergeron, then said to the mother: "Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada, you should eat the way Canadians eat. If you 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."

You know, there are just so many things wrong with this, I can't even figure out where to begin...