"Cutlery controversy back on the table"
A Filipino-Canadian spoon and fork controversy, which sparked international protests, is making headlines again. The Montreal-based Centre for Research-Action On Race Relations (CRARR) has asked the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission to review, and even rescind, its ruling on a complaint of racial discrimination filed by a woman whose son was exposed to discriminatory remarks and treatments for eating with a spoon and a fork in a school in Montreal.
Last month, Quebec’s Human Rights Commission ruled that Luc Cagadoc, was reprimanded for his table manners, not his choice of utensils. “It’s not a matter of discrimination. It’s a matter of education in the classroom,” commission president Gaétan Cousineau told CTV Montreal.
The commission also said there is no evidence that the principal said the boy should eat like a Canadian. But it noted that the lunchtime supervisor acted in a discriminatory manner by asking the boy if people in “his country” washed their hands before eating. The commission determined that the comment was an isolated incident ...
"Eating habits dispute leads to damage award"
http://tinyurl.com/3xagqre
"Quebec's Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a Montreal-area school board and two of its employees to pay a total of $17,000 in damages to the family of a Filipino-Canadian boy who was repeatedly reprimanded by a lunch monitor for eating with a fork and spoon at the same time."Eleven-year old Luc Cagadoc was discriminated against by the board and its employees as a result of his ethnicity, the tribunal ruled in a decision made public on Friday.
"The family of the boy, who was attending Grade 2 at Lalande School in Montreal's Roxboro district, filed a complaint with the province's Human Rights Commission after the conflict with the school administration in April 2006 ... "
The link doesn't work, at least for me.
Here's one that does.
I should never, ever read the comments left by people afters stories like these. Or read editorials in the first place.
Here is a You Tube interview with the family. It is a mixture of Fillipino and English but understandable and you get to see the kid eating with the fork and spoon - not a big deal at all, in fact I might try it.