Forks, Spoons, and Filipinos

Apparently, pigs know how to eat with a fork and spoon. Or, so says an elementary school principal in Montreal, Canada. Seven-year-old Luc Cagadoc has found himself at the center of an international brouhaha, involving a recent incident in which he was reprimanded by a lunch monitor at school for eating in the customary Filipino style, with a fork and a spoon.

When his mother, a recent immigrant from the Philippines, called the principal to complain, he replied, "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."

Now, supposedly, Luc has been disciplined previously for disruptive behavior, so I'm not 100% certain that the "pig" comment was because of the way he eats or the way he may act up in the lunch room. But according to Luc's mother, the principal told her that, in Canada, one should "eat the way Canadians eat"--and that has led to a wave of protests across the ocean from Canada to the Philippines. The apparent comparison of Filipinos to pigs has raised an uproar among Filipinos in both hemispheres, and it doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon.

Schools have such bigger problems to deal with, that this whole incident is utterly ridiculous. Given that ketchup is now considered a vegetable by school lunch terms, they need to quit worrying about how kids eat and focus more on what they eat.

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