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.” --(By Andy Blatchford, The Chronicle)

 “TORPE” is one of those Filipino cultural words. Its English equivalent, timid does not fully capture its real meaning. But then again, neither does its local popular meaning. To most Filipinos, it simply means being shy with the opposite sex. Yet it is something more than that. In order to fully comprehend the term, let us observe a typical torpe and how he goes about his love life.

 While most people fall head over heels for voluptuous women, our torpe does not. The usual subject of his affections is someone who is, as childish as it may sound, nice. Our torpe easily falls for a lady who is amiable, congenial and smiles a lot (it would seem that he looks more for personality rather that for physical beauty). He doesn’t go after a lady just so that he can have someone to brag for his friends about. Rather, he likes someone whom he could talk with, share some thoughts with, walk under the stars with. But neither the talk nor the walk really ever happens for how can he talk to someone whom he shies away from?

 Being torpe, he does not have enough courage to talk, or do any form of interaction, with his crush. He sweats at the mere thought of saying something to her. He runs (yes, this does happen) whenever he sees her coming and hides in some deserted room (torpes have sharp eyes and can easily spot their crush from miles away). And when he has no place to run or hide, our torpe, simply passes her by and pretends that he did not see her, from fear that he may have to say anything to her. The most that he ever does is to take an occasional glimpse at her. And should his crush just happen to look at him too as he glances at her, a thousand stampeding horses rush about in his chest

 What happens if, by some freak of nature, our torpe is forced into a situation in which he has to talk to his crush? He usually just stands there and gathers dust, waiting and hoping that it is she who shall initiate a conversation. And if she does not do anything to start they end up saying “hi” and “hello” to each other 10 times over. But usually, after the third “hi” and fifth “hello”, the lady says that she has to go somewhere and leaves. Our torpe then blames himself for fouling up what seemed to be the chance of a lifetime for him. Don’t get him wrong, it is not that he does not want to speak with her. In fact it’s quite the opposite, he zealously wants to talk with her. He does anything he can to get a chance to converse with his crush. He follows her home, to the library, to her classes, to the mall, to the church, eagerly waiting for her to notice and approach him. He would approach if he could, but the nearer she becomes the more his tongue swells. And when she is within talking distance, zoom! He runs away.

 So how does our torpe court his crush? Through letters. What he cannot say personally he says with pen and paper. At first, he sends a thank you note for some trivial thing, or a birthday card, or a Christmas card, or a religious Jewish card (torpes sometimes employ the most outrageous excuses.) If she sends him a note in return, he then sends her a letter. This time, the letter is a narrative on how his day, but he ends it with a question on how her day went or on how she is. He hopes that she’ll write back, but almost always, she never does. Yet our torpe still writes to her and writes and writes and writes, until she is literally flooded with letters. As time progresses, these letters start to contain declarations of love toward her. As I said, what he cannot say personally, he says with pen and paper. This of course does not mean that he loves her any less than a normal person would. It’s just that he’s too afraid to tell her.

 In the end, his crush distances herself from him, evades him. She is afraid that our torpe will think that she likes him too. But he’ll never think this way. He knows that she won’t fall for him; for who could like someone who’s too afraid to talk too scared to speak to the most important person in his life, too frightened to say the wrong thing to the lady whom he loves above all else, I should know – I’m a torpe too.